Evaluation of Field pea (Pisum sativum L. var. arvense) genotypes for genetic variability and divergence

Abstract

The experiment was carried out with ninety genotypes and four check varieties to estimate extant of genetic divergence, genotypic coefficient of variance and phenotypic coefficient of variance for different traits, for this purpose data on various quantitative characters was taken out. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among all the genotypes for majority of the traits except pod length, this indicates good amount of genetic variation in the experimental material under investigation. Moderate to high level of genotypic and phenotypic coefficient of variance were observed among the genotypes. Phenotypic coefficients of variance were found slightly higher than genotypic coefficient of variance this indicates very less environmental influence on the expression of the characters. Higher estimates of GCV (22.84) were recorded for pod length (cm) followed by number of pods per plant (20.96), number of primary branches per plant (20.78) and plant height (17.40) this indicates that pod length, number of pods per plant, number of primary branches per plant and plant height may be utilized as selection parameters. Genetic divergence through Non-hierarchical Euclidean cluster analysis includes TOCHER’s and WARD methods. Through the WARD’s method all the genotypes were grouped into 10 non-overlapping clusters in which cluster number IV and X were found largest including 12 genotypes while cluster IX was found smallest having 2 genotypes namely Pant P 223 and NDP 14-11. The higher inter cluster distance were observed between cluster number II and VIII (84.837) and between cluster II and V (75.302), this indicates that the genotypes belonging to these clusters are more genetically divergent from each other and Intermating between such genotypes would produce more heterotic F1 progeny.