Exploring Genetic Diversity in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) | Chapter 7 | Current Research in Science and Technology Vol. 4

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important legumes for consumption in India as well as worldwide. In grain legumes, it ranks second in acreage and third in production with productivity of 913 kg/ha. India is the largest producer of chickpea, accounts 70.9% of the world cultivated area and produces 67.1% of the total world production. D2 statistical analysis is a tool which measures the degree of divergence among the population. Multivariate analysis with “Mahalanobis D2 statistics” a strong tool to know the pattern of clustering to verify the relationship between genetic and geographic divergence and to discover the importance of different quantitative traits towards the maximum divergence. The present investigation was undertaken to study the nature and magnitude of genetic diversity among chickpea genotypes. The experimental material comprised of forty genotypes of chickpea in Rabi 2016-17 at Pulse Research Farm, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour (Bhagalpur). The experiment was laid in a randomized complete block design with three replications during Rabi with the inclusion of the recommended packages and practices needed for a healthy crop. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among the forty genotypes for all the characters studied indicating that significant amount of genetic variability present in the material. The cluster I had maximum eleven genotypes followed by cluster VI, 08  genotypes, cluster III, 07 genotypes and IV having five genotypes, while cluster II and V had four genotypes, respectively.  The cluster VII was mono-genotypic having one genotype. The intra-cluster D2 value ranged from 0.00 to 25.16 while, inter-cluster D2 value ranged from 30.73 to 204.05. The maximum intra cluster distance was exhibited by cluster V followed by cluster I and cluster IV.  The maximum inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster II and VII (204.05), followed by cluster II and V (170.79) and cluster III and V (157.56)  suggesting that the genetic architecture of the genotypes in one cluster differ entirely from those included in other clusters. The genotypes BAUG 108, H12-63, RKG13-380, AKG1303 and KWR108 were identified as genetically diverse parents, which can be utilized for future crop improvement programme in Chickpea. The above results indicate that these genotypes have maximum genetic diversity and useful for developing a large number of segregants through crossing programme by using maximum diverse genotypes.

Author(s) Details

Anand Kumar
Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour (Bhagalpur)-813210, Bihar, India.


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