Vol. 12, Issue 11 (2023)

Author(s):
Ravindra Singh Solanki and Anita Babbar

Abstract:
During the Rabi season of 2017-18, an experiment was conducted at the Seed Breeding Farm of Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya to investigate the genetic diversity present in 50 kabuli chickpea genotypes under normal sowing conditions. The study aimed to assess genetic variability, correlation, path coefficients, and genetic diversity in yield and its contributing traits. The experiment employed a Randomized Block Design with three replications. Analysis of variance revealed that genotypes were highly significant for all traits except the number of primary branches per plant and the number of seeds per pod. Phenotypic variance was found to be higher in magnitude than genotypic variance, a trend observed consistently across all the characters investigated. Notably, high genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variance were recorded for the number of effective pods per plant, total number of pods per plant, biological yield, and seed yield per plant. Traits such as total number of pods per plant, total number of seeds per plant, seed yield per plant, biological yield per plant, and number of effective pods per plant exhibited high heritability coupled with a high genetic advance as a percentage of the mean, suggesting that heritability is predominantly due to additive gene actions, making selection based on these traits effective. Correlation coefficients among yield and component characters indicated significant positive correlations with biological yield, total number of pods per plant, number of effective pods per plant, plant height, days to maturity, number of secondary branches per plant, days to flower initiation, days to 50% flowering, and days to pod initiation. Path coefficient analysis revealed that biological yield per plant had the highest positive direct effect on seed yield per plant, followed by the number of effective pods per plant, total number of pods per plant, total number of seeds per pod, harvest index, and days to maturity. The percentage contribution of various characters toward total divergence showed that the total number of pods per plant contributed the most, followed by biological yield, 100-seed weight, seed yield per plant, harvest index, days to pod initiation, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, number of primary branches per plant, number of effective pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, days to flower initiation, number of secondary branches per plant, and plant height. The evaluation of fifty kabuli chickpea genotypes for genetic divergence resulted in the grouping of genotypes into eight clusters. Clusters I, III, V, VII, and VIII were poly-genotypic, while clusters II, IV, and VI were mono-genotypic. The highest inter-cluster distance was observed for cluster VIII, followed by clusters III, I, VII, and V. Meanwhile, three clusters, namely II, IV, and VI, showed zero values for intra-cluster distance in the present investigation.