IntroductionGladiolus is one of the most important bulbous ornamentals for cut flower trade in India. It is also ideal both for garden display, floral arrangements for table and interior decoration as well as making high quality bouquet [1]. The main emphasis in Gladiolus improvement has been on the development of varieties having attractive color and large number of florets mainly for cut flower, viz long spikes, more number of well-spaced large sized florets and good corm multiplication ability. Gladiolus is very rich in varietal wealth and every year there is an addition of new varieties [2]. Multiplication of planting material of Gladiolus is most important because the cut flower trade is lagging behind over the recent years, owing to he unavailability of sufficient quality planting material at large scale [3]. Moreover, new varieties also come from other countries, and the performance of these varieties depends upon climatic conditions of the region under which they are grown. As a result, cultivars which perform well in one region may not perform same in other regions of varying climatic conditions [4]. It is also important to study the performance of existing cultivars for their superior desirable characters [5]. Hence, it becomes very much necessary to study the morphological variation and evaluation of genotypes and also to identify the suitable germplasm for further improvement programme in U.P. region.Studies on genetic diversity for yield traits is important as the individual plant selection is slowly dependent on variability. More the diversity better are chances of improving the economic characters under consideration in the resulting offspring. Crop improvement in Gladiolus has so far been achieved by exploiting the available sources of the variability. Naturally the genetic variation or diversity for most of the yield attributes is considerably high in Gladiolus. Keeping in view the above facts there is an urgent need to seek improvement in complex quantitative trait such as flower and corm yield of Gladiolus. As a result of free exchange of Gladiolus germplasm and lot of introgression of characters has taken place in many local Gladiolus cultivars resulting in enhancement of variability and new genetic combinations. Mahalanobis D 2 analysis helps in assessing the diversity among the genotypes and to select the divergent parents for future breeding programmes. Currently, such assessment is mainly based on a small number of phenotypic traits. However, environmental conditions may affect their expression and so assessing only morphological traits may not reflect the genetic diversity available. Material and MethodsThe present investigation was carried out with fifty-three varieties The intra-cluster was maximum in cluster VII (D2=372.852) reveals maximum genetic diversity followed by cluster II (D2=343.392) and cluster V (D2=150.904) and maximum inter-cluster generalized distance (D2=1855.023) was between cluster VII and cluster VIII exhibited maximum divergence followed cluster II and VIII (D2=156...