Pigeon pea is an important leguminous crop widely cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions for its protein-rich seeds and soil-enriching properties. The present investigation was conducted in an augmented block design during Kharif 2020 at the Research Farm of Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India. The experimental material consisted of 73 genotypes of pigeon pea, including three checks, NDA-1, Bahar and Pant Arhar-291 to examine genetic diversity among these genotypes. Analysis of variance revealed significant genotypic variation for most of the traits among the genotypes, suggesting that the variation may be exploited through selection for the development of a variety with high-yield genetic potential. Cluster analysis grouped the genotypes into five distinct, non-overlapping clusters. Cluster I contained the highest number of genotypes (25), followed by Cluster III (19), Cluster II (14), Cluster V (9) and Cluster IV (6). Clusters II and IV had the greatest inter-cluster distance, which indicated that crossing genotypes between these clusters would result in high-quality recombinants. Principal component analysis (PCA) extracted five components that contributed 67.89 % variance to the total variation among the tested genotypes. The genotypes which showed the highest genetic diversity can be used as a parent in a hybridization program. Early flowering was observed with the genotypes IPA-10W-8-1 (74.09 days), IPA-12W-16 (78.09 days) and genotypes IPA-12W-3 (202.37 g), IPAB-10-13 (199.70 g), IPA-17W-218 (195.72 g), IPA-12W-38 (192.80 g), Local-4 (191.83 g), IPA-10W-5-8 (190.83 g) had the highest seed yield per plant. These germplasm lines can be used as potential parents for the development of high-yielding and early maturing cultivars.
Kumar et al. (Thu,) studied this question.