Genetic diversity among 34 rice genotypes was worked out using Mahalanobis D2 statistic. On the basis of genetic distance, these genotypes were grouped into seven clusters. Cluster II was the largest, consisting of 14 genotypes, followed by cluster I with nine genotypes and cluster VII with three genotypes, while clusters III, IV V and VI contained two genotypes each. There was no parallelism between genetic diversity and geographical distribution. The maximum inter cluster distance (140.17) was highest between Cluster II and cluster VII, followed by clusters VI and VII. Among the different characters studied, grain yield per plant, number of grains per panicle, days to fifty per cent flowering and grain length contributed significantly for the genetic diversity. The genotypes (AUR-3, CO-43, ASD-19 and Manavari) from these clusters may be used as potential donors for future hybridization programme to develop higher grain yield.
