Genetic variation is essential to plant breeding for increasing yield, wider adaptation, parental selection for hybridization, desirable quality, and pest and disease resistance. Therefore, this study was planned to investigate genetic divergence and association of agromorphological and oil traits in groundnut cultivars.The crop was sown during 2015 wet season across four locations in randomized complete block design (RCBD) to study the variability and their interrelationship; divergence and association pattern based on quantitative traits.The Eigen vectors based on Euclidean distance matrix (D) for 17 oil traits and quality parameters has shown that the first principal component had high positive component loading from monounsaturated and saturated fatty acid traits/parameters: oleic acid, eicosenoic acid, lignoceric acid, behenic acid, total monounsaturated fatty acids (TMUS), oleic to linoleic acid (O/L) ratio, total unsaturated fatty acids (TUS), oil yield (OY), and grain yield (GY). The corresponding genotypes were Oldhale, Lote, Behajidu, Werer-962, Bulki, Manipeter, Roba, Shulamith, Tole-1, NC-343, Tole-2 and Behagudo. Thus, for PC1 oleic acid, O/L ratio and TMUS were the best traits for selection since they had the largest loading from component ones while Oldhale was the corresponding best genotype in first component with large proportion of monounsaturated fatty acids. On the other hand, the first component has high negative component loading from low oil quality traits/parameters including palmitic, linoleic, stearic acid, total polyunsaturated to total saturated (TPUS/TS) ratio, total saturated fatty acids (TS), iodine value (IV) and oil content. The corresponding genotype loads were Werer-961, Fetene, Sedi and Werer-963. Such genotypes were relatively high in polyunsaturated fatty acid traits. Thus, the most distinct genotypes were being Oldhale/Lote/Werer-962 and Fetene/Werer-961.

Keywords: Grain yield, iodine value, Linoleic acid, oil yield, Oleic acid.