THE USE OF CHARACTERIZATION DATA TO ESTABLISH THE INDIAN MUNGBEAN CORE COLLECTION AND ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY

A representative core set of well characterised Indian mungbean collec tion was developed using information on passport, characterisation and evaluation data. Initial diversity groups of the accessions comprisin g the whole collection were formed based on six major crop growing zon es and a separate group for a few accessions from diverse exotic sourc es. Principal components score strategy was found to be most useful in maximising the selection inertia than strictly random sampling in all individual groups. A total of 152 accessions were extracted and the v alidity of their representativeness was established by comparing its d iversity with that of the whole collection. Shannon diversity index fo r qualitative characters and certain statistical parameters for quanti tative variables were used for measuring the diversity of the accessio ns in the core set and that of the whole collection. The representativ e core set was subjected to multivariate analysis for assessment of ge netic diversity and also the variation patterns for discriminating amo ng accessions to facilitate the users for easy accessibility, and effe ctive and efficient utilisation of the material.