Information about genetic diversity and relationships among the breeding materials has a signifi cant impact on crop improvement. Association between parental divergence and progeny performance has not been well documented in cotton. A cotton study was conducted in the department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University College of Agriculture, Bahauddin Zakaryia University, Multan, (30.2oN, 71.4oE) Pakistan and National Food Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan. The objective of this study was to estimate genetic diversity among selected cotton genotypes and their
reciprocal crosses. Six U.S. and two local (Pakistani) cultivars all belonging to Gossypium hirsutum L were genotyped by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and compared with BioRad molecular weight markers. Cluster analysis revealed low genetic diversity among the parents and pooled the crosses with their parents, indicating success of hybridization. The present study, combined PAGE analysis with cluster analysis confi rmed the genetic similarities between parents and their crosses while it also confi rmed the dissimilarities between the parents as showed by the morphological characters.
