Assessment of genetic divergence in pea (Pisum sativum L.) based on morphological and horticultural traits

Abstract

Background: Pea is one of the most important legume crops in India. It is important to improve the genetic diversity of these crops in order to generate high-yielding varieties of pea. As a result, the goal of this research was to look into the variability and identify the relative value of main and secondary qualities as selection criteria for increasing productivity. Methods:The study was conducted at YSUHF, Nauni. The experiment material comprised of 115 genotypes along with 6 check varieties evaluated during the year 2019-2020. The data generated was subjected to PCA and clustering analysis. Results: Genetic diversity of one hundred fifteen diverse genotypes of pea comprising of one hundred nine exotic lines along with six checks viz., DMK- 11, ARKEL, IC-279125, RACHNA, DMR-7, and HFP-4 of garden pea genotypes was worked out using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Based on genetic distance, genotypes were grouped into six clusters of the six clusters, cluster II and III was the largest, having 24 genotypes, followed by cluster IV, cluster V, cluster VI, cluster I. The average intra-cluster distance was highest in cluster IV (112.45) and lowest in cluster II (84.18). The highest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster VI and cluster III (134.09), indicating the genotypes in these clusters are more diverged and they can be used as parents in the hybridization program to obtain superior segregants. Cluster means for various traits revealed that cluster I was better for total soluble solids, number of seeds per pod, pod yield, shelling percentage, pod length, pod yield and number of pods per plant cluster VI was found superior for plant height, number of pods per plant and number of pods per plant. Therefore, hybridization among the genotypes of cluster V and cluster II can be utilized to obtain superior hybrids or recombinants in later segregating generations.