Development of Core Collection for Perennial Mulberry (Morus spp.) Germplasm

Improvement of mulberry (crop) depends on the availability of suitable parents and breeders’ thorough knowledge on the database of mulberry germplasm. to develop suitable varieties which are tolerant to stress condition in different agro climatic regions and resistant to pest and diseases, broad spectrum genetic variability is a pre-requisite. in this study, a total of 628 mulberry accessions were collected from 23 different countries and classified into 5 geographical groups, based on the qualitative and quantitative database. the grouping represented tropical wet (237), tropical dry (121), sub-tropical humid (215), semi-arid (10), arid (04), highland (25) and others (16). a core collection was made to compare the data, following the combined cluster analysis. the k-clustering procedure was followed to classify the mulberry accessions and 10 clusters were formed. the results indicated that cluster viii had more number of accessions (125), whereas cluster ii was minimum (27). in other clusters, mulberry accessions were distributed randomly irrespective of geographical origin and genetic diversity. based on the geographical origin, genetic diversity and avoiding repetitiveness, a core collection was developed for the utilization of mulberry crop improvement programme in the future.