~ 1588 ~ The Pharma Innovation Journal 2021; 10(5): 1588-1591 ISSN (E): 2277- 7695 ISSN (P): 2349-8242 NAAS Rating: 5.23 TPI 2021; 10(5): 1588-1591 © 2021 TPI www.thepharmajournal.com Received: 27-02-2021 Accepted: 30-04-2021 Mainak Barman Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Bengal, India Vinay Kumar Choudhary Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur, Bihar, India Satish Kumar Singh Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur, Bihar, India Rabiya Parveen Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur, Bihar, India Amitava Roy Division of Genetics, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa Campus, New Delhi, India Pulak Debbarma Division of Genetics, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa Campus, New Delhi, India Corresponding Author: Mainak Barman Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur, Nadia, West Bengal, India Cluster analysis in bread wheat (Tricitum aestivum L.) genotypes for morpho-physiological traits and grain micronutrient content Mainak Barman, Vinay Kumar Choudhary, Satish Kumar Singh, Rabiya Parveen, Amitava Roy and Pulak Debbarma Abstract Wheat (Triticum spp.) is considered as one key staple food crop in numerous places of our globe not only in terms of the area under cultivation but as a source of food also. It covers all the continents of the globe, engaging 17% of the world acreage of crops and feeds almost 40% populations globally. More than 3 billion population worldwide roughly, experiences the malnutrition problems. Malnutrition of micronutrient, predominantly the deficiency in Zinc and Iron worldwide afflicts more than three billion people. Keeping all the above considerations insight, the current evaluation of genetic diversity in bread wheat was performed for morpho-physiological traits and grain micronutrient content. The total 30 bread wheat genotypes under investigation were grouped into nine clusters. Cluster II included eight genotypes which were the highest followed by cluster I, cluster IV and cluster VII containing 6, 6 and 5 genotypes respectively. However, the rest five clusters namely, cluster III, cluster V, cluster VI, cluster VIII and cluster IX were solitary. The utmost inter-cluster distance was noted between the clusters VII and IX and the least inter-cluster distance was noted between the clusters V and VI. Genotypes RAUW-18-15, RAUW-18-21, DBW 16, BHU 25, RAUW-16-4 were recorded genetically most diverse having the highest intra-cluster distance. The highest contribution in manifesting genetic divergence was revealed by grain Fe content, followed by grain Zn content, days to fifty percent flowering, 1000-grain weight, grain yield per plant, number of grains/ ear. This means, it may be rewarding to execute selection for these traits. Keywords: Bread wheat, clusters, genetic divergence, micronutrient malnutrition, morpho-physiological traits Introduction Wheat (Triticum spp.) is considered as one key staple food crop in numerous places of our globe not only in terms of the area under cultivation but as a source of food also. Wheat cultivation is distributed geographically in such an abundant manner that it is being reaped in one country or another all around the year. It is a long-day, monocot, C3, self-pollinated plant. It belongs to the tribe Triticeae, under the widely diverse and significance holding "Poaceae" family of the plant kingdom. The total harvest of the crop worldwide in 2017 was about 771 million tons. In India, more than 98 million tons of production was documented in 2017 (FAOSTAT, 2017) [1] . In almost all parts of India, wheat is under cultivation with a contribution of nearly about 30% to the nation’s food basket (Kumar et al., 2016) [2] . However, most of the wheat cultivars are micronutrient-deficit, such as Zinc and Iron in prevalence (Cakmak et al., 2004) [3] . 'Hidden-hunger' is a massive public health issue affecting all the developing nations striking underprivileged people chiefly (Gani et al. 2018) [4] . More than 3 billion population worldwide roughly, experience the malnutrition problems due to lack of micronutrients (White and Broadley, 2009) [5] . Since the Green Revolution, the yields of cereal grains worldwide have been boosted spectacularly, but cereal-based diet falls petite to provide adequate nutrients (Welch and Graham, 2004) [6] . For a balanced diet of human-being, an adequate amount of nutrients from grain is not provided in the developing world by most of the agricultural arrangements (Cakmak et al., 2010) [7] . To combat the worldwide malnutrition evil and related health hazards, enrichment of grain nutrient (biofortification), either by agronomic means or by genetic means, is now considered to be the approach with the most proficiency and cost-effectiveness (Peleg et al., 2009) [8] . Keeping the above considerations insight, the current investigation was performed with the intention of investigating divergence in Bread Wheat genotypes for yield-attributing traits along with grain zinc and iron content.