ABSTRACT

India is one of the richest countries for plant diversity with approximately 16,000 vascular plants, 5000 endemic species and 140 endemic genera. However, an estimated 3000-4000 plant species are being threatened to be on the verge of extinction, fixing India, one of the highest priorities for plant biodiversity conservation. In recent decades, India has increasingly recognized the importance of plant diversity in efforts to conserve and sustainably use its plant diversity. Conservation requires a sound scientific and technical basis and there are two methods viz., ex situ and in situ conservation which are equally important and should be regarded as complementary. In the process of ex situ conservation, the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) possess 3,85,645 germplasm accessions of various agri- horticultural crops. Realising the need of ago biodiversity conservation, TNAU has created a gene bank facility named after the legendary rice breeder Dr. K. Ramiah, with the capacity to conserve more than 1,00,000 germplasm accession under medium term storage (MTS) and long term storage (LTS) conditions. Presently a total of 13,567 accessions of more than 21 species are deposited in the gene bank. These provide an important reserve of plant resources for sustainable economic and social development. Thus, TNAU's strategic and vision for conservation of plant diversity and sustainable use of plant resources in the 21 st century is of far-reaching significance for sustainable development of our economy and society.

A group of 30 strains of black gram collected from different geographic regions of India was studied to analyse the extent of genetic divergence using Mahalanobi's D' technique. The strains got grouped into eight clusters and the clustering pattern was independent of geographic distribution. Characters, pod yield and seeds/pod were found to be important contributors to genetic divergence.

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