Agro Morphological Characterization and Diversity Assessment of Pea (Pisum Sativum L.) Germplasm Conserved in Genebank of Nepal

Abstract

A total 122 landraces collection collection of pea (Pisum sativum L.) germplasm accessions conserved in the Gene bank of Nepal was characterized for 8 quantitative and 11 qualitative traits to assess the magnitude of prevailing genetic variability at National Agriculture Genetic Resources Centre (Genebank), Khumaltar, Nepal during 2017. Shannon and Weaver diversity index (H’) analysis revealed significant intra landrace diversity for both quantitative (0.783) and qualitative traits (0.536). The first two principle components with Eigen value >1 accounted for 66.3% of the entire variability for quantitative traits. For qualitative traits, four principle components with Eigen value >1 accounted for 61.6% of the entire variability. Four clusters were established with phenotypic similarities using Euclidean distance and average linkage methods. The landraces grouped into the cluster I were characterized by higher pod length, width and 100 seed weight. Pearson correlation analysis among seven quantitative traits showed highly significant positive correlation (r = 0.557***) between flowering days and maturity days. This variation indicated that there is a way to identify promising genotypes for pea breeding.