Vol. 16 No. 1
Studies on genetic variability, divergence and association of characters in grass pea
Author(s): N. SINHA MAHAPATRA, A. DAS, P.K. BHATTACHARYYA, S. BHATTACHARYA, S. PAL AND S. BARPETE
Abstract: Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) (2n=14), can be treated as an “insurance crop” because of its credible yields when other crops fail due to prolonged drought and flood condition. The present investigation was carried out during winter season of 2018-19 with 20 different genotypes of grass pea at the Regional Research Sub-Station, Chakdah, Nadia,West Bengal in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. Observation has been recorded on eight yield attributing traits to evaluate the genetic variability among the grass pea lines and to assess correlation between yield and yield attribute traits. Result reflected adequate variability on yield and yield attributing characters among the tested genotypes. High to moderate heritability (%) coupled with high to moderate genetic advance was observed for plant height (cm), days to 50 % flowering, number of pods plant-1. The estimates of genotypic (GCV) and phenotypic (PCV) coefficient of variation for number of seeds pod-1, number of branches, seed yield plant-1 (g) exhibited higher differences which indicated that environment play a key role in influencing the expression of these characters. Plant height, number of pods plant-1, number of seeds pod -1exhibited positive and significant correlation with seed yield plant-1 (g) at both genotypic and phenotypic levels. Genotypic path co-efficient analysis revealed that during selection greater emphasis should be given on number of pods plant-1, number of seeds pod-1 and 100 seed weight (g) for improvement of seed yield. D2 analysis of the present study resulted in five clusters among which maximum inter cluster distance was found between Cluster V and I (14.755). So, the genotypes from these two clusters might be used as parents in the hybridization programme to generate breeding material with high diversity to get encouraging results.
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