Genetic diversity among 30 advanced breeding lines of groundnut were estimated using Mahalanobis D2 statistic for 21 characters. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the advanced breeding lines for all characters. Based on Tocher's method, 30 advanced breeding lines were grouped into ten clusters. Cluster II is the largest cluster with seven genotypes. Cluster III and IV contain six genotypes and cluster I contain four genotypes, cluster IX contain two genotypes remaining clusters (V, VI, VII, VIII and X) are monogenotypic clusters, this grouping indicated considerable diversity among the breeding lines. Intra-cluster distance is maximum in cluster IV (138.29) followed by cluster II (105.35), cluster IX (86.77), cluster III (85.87) and cluster I (60.44). Highest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster VIII and IX (491.25) followed by cluster IX and X (472.37) and cluster III and IX (457.84) indicating the existence of high diversity within and between clusters. Hence the genotypes from these clusters can be utilized as potential parents and crossing among them would be suggested to generate a wide range of variability for effective selection for improvement of various characters.

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