Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) is the third largest natural fiber crop and one of the five major oil crops in the world. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the oil content and fatty acid compositions of flax varieties grown in Chhattisgarh state of India. The oil content ranged from 33.97% to 42.27% in the experimental material. The highest oil content was recorded for variety Deepika (42.27%) followed by Indira Alsi-32 (42.12%), Sharda (41.12%) and Kartika (41.11%). Two saturated (Palmatic and stearic acid) and three unsaturated fatty acids (Oleic, linoleic and linolenic acid) were identified by gas chromatography represented 12.34% and 87.65% of the total oil, respectively. Fatty acid analysis of the flax varieties in our studies showed 33.14% to 54.82% of linolenic acid whereas, the mean value of linoleic, oleic, stearic and palmatic acid were 15.88%, 27.76%, 6.26% and 6.07%, respectively. The variety RLC-92 (54.82%) exhibited the highest linolenic acid followed by RLC-134 (53.01%), R-552 (52.41%), R-4140 (51.14%), RLC-122 (51.08%) and GS-64 (50.49%) while the lowest linolenic acid was observed in the variety Kiran (33.14%) followed by Sharda (34.41%) and Neela (36.85%). Both genotypic (GCV) and phenotypic coefficients of variation (PCV) were low for oil content and fatty acid components. Linoleic acid exhibited highest GCV (17.52%) and PCV (17.63%), respectively. High heritability with moderate genetic advance was observed for oil content and all fatty acid components suggest that selection per se will be rewarding for these traits. Correlation coefficient revealed weak positive association of 1000 seed weight with oil content. Among all the fatty acids, palmatic acid showed significant positive association while linoleic acid showed significant negative association. Results indicated that higher oil content varieties showed higher linolenic acid in flax.

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The present investigation was undertaken to assess the genetic diversity of flax cultivars using molecular markers. 90 SSR and 10 ISSR flax markers were employed for molecular diversity analysis. Out of these, 25 microsatellite markers were found to be polymorphic giving a total of 99 bands with an average of 3.96 bands per marker ranging from 2 to 12. The polymorphic information content (PIC) value of each SSR primer pair ranged from 0.21 to 0.88 with an average of 0.49 while in case of ISSR primers, out of 10 primers, only 2 were found polymorphic producing a total of 20 bands with an average of 10 bands per marker ranging from 2 to 11. The polymorphic information content (PIC) value of ISSR primer pair ranged from 0.62 to 0.75 with an average of 0.68. Cluster analysis based on Jaccard's similarity coefficient using UPGMA grouped the 48 flax varieties into two clusters. The Jaccard's similarity ranged from 0.56 to 0.97 with an average similarity index of 0.76. The genotype Polf-22 showed the highest similarity with LCK-88068 (i.e. 0.96) while Neela showed the least similarity with R-4158 (i.e. 0.68). It was evident from the cluster analysis that two introduced genotypes Neela and R-4158 were the most distantly related to the remaining genotypes followed by PKDL -43, RLC-137, KL-168 and R-4152. So, these genotypes must be further used in breeding programme for developing improved varieties.

Twenty black gram genotypes were evaluated at five different locations of middle Gujarat in kharif 2016 to assess the genotype x environmental interactions in RBD design with two replications. The data were analyzed according to the AMMI model and AMMI based stability measures (ASV Wi(AMMI) and ASTABi). Analysis of variance on the data pooled over locations and G x E interaction was found significant indicated genotypes performed differently in different locations. IPCA1 and IPCA2 were found significant in AMMI model and both combined accounted for by 78.7% variance of GEI. Environments viz., Devgadhbaria, Derol and Dahod were found high yielding environments whereas Vadodara and Jabugam were low yielding environments. Genotypes G3, G18, G16 and G10 gave high yield in environment E3, E1 & E4, E5 and E2, respectively as they were vertex genotypes in polygon of AMMI2. According to AMMI model, ASV, Wi(AMMI) and ASTABi, G19 was found stable and high yielding genotype, whereas G16 was unstable genotypes.

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