12334 10.30848/PJB2025-2(25) <p> Phenotypic, biochemical and molecular diversity and divergence in <em>Brassica</em> accessions representing different species</p> <p> &nbsp;</p> Gohar Zaman, Tamana Bakht, Muhammad Rameez Khan, Iqbal Munir, Hafiz Munir Ahmad, Aamir Iqbal, Safi Ullah, Muhammad Arif and Sajid Ali <p> Genetic improvement in <em>Brassica</em> is crucial for the production of sufficient edible oil, which requires exploitation of diverse genetic resources. The present study assessed divergence and diversity of 24 <em>Brassica</em> accessions belonging to different species through molecular genotyping, biochemical characterization and field testing. Considering yield contributing parameters, number of siliquas main raceme^-1 ranged from 39.3 (local genotype) to 48.7 siliqas (IBGE-2); number of primary branches ranged from 3.3 (wester-209) to 6.0 (p118 and Altex 232); number of siliquas plant^-1 ranged from 173 (Torch-237) to 409 (IBGE-4); seeds siliqua^-1 ranged from 13 (IBGE-4) to 21 (p-118); yield ranged from 560 g (Mun-1) to 1462 g (IBGE-4). Variability was also observed for oil content (%), which ranged from 47 (Zahoor-15 and IBGE-1) to 53 (Mun-1 and Crusher-212), while the protein content was overall in higher content, with the highest value of 24% (Zahoor-15). Molecular genotyping with a set of 16 polymorphic loci revealed the maximum number of loci (5) for OPC-05, followed by OPC-09 and OPB-04 (4). The maximum gene diversity (0.497) was recorded for loci OPB-04-L3, while the minimum (0.080) was for locus OPC-05-L5. The neighbor-joining tree showed that accessions representing <em>B. juncea</em> were dispersed among various genotypes. In network analysis, two clusters were identified. Cluster I consisted of <em>B. compestres</em> while cluster II comprised of <em>B. juncea</em> with similarity to other <em>B. napus</em> crossed genotypes. The divergence and diversity observed in the present study should be useful for genetic improvement</p> Published 2025 57 2 561 571