Study of variability and association analysis for various agromorphological traits in lentil (Lens culinaris M.)

Abstract

The present study was undertaken at DARS, Budgam to study the variability and diversity in foreign accessions of lentil. A set of 45 genotypes of lentil comprising 44 accessions from ICARDA BIGM nursery and a local variety Shalimar Masur 1 as check were evaluated for various maturity, yield, yield associated traits and protein content. From the analysis of variance, a significant variability was found for all the traits under study. LSN-2016-153 was early flowering genotype with 165.33 days to 50% flowering, followed by LSN-2016-195 with 166 days to 50% flowering which was also a high yielding genotype. LSN-2016-181 was earliest maturing of all genotypes despite having 170 days to 50% flowering, which means this genotype has ability to reduce time between flowering and maturity. Large differences between phenotypic and genotypic variances were found for these two traits, which means environment has a lot to say in these traits. Plant height was also variable, despite being a monogenic trait it was well correlated with days to maturity and flowering, which means late flowering due to temperate conditions, can affect plant height. Primary branches per plant, pods per plant and seeds per pods were positively and significantly correlated with seed yield per plant. 100 seed weight was negatively correlated with yield contributing traits. LSN-2016-219 had highest mean yield of 3.52g per plant, while protein content was highest for LSN-2016-201, which came at the expanse of yield which stood very low at 1.2g per plant.