Multivariate Analysis of Quantitative Traits in Field Pea (Pisum sativum var. arvense)

Background: Field pea is one of the important cool season grain legume crops cultivated in India. In this investigation, experimental material i.e. eighty germplasm lines of field pea with four checks (IPF 4-9, Adarsh, Ambika and IPFD 10-12) were evaluated to determine the estimates of genetic diversity in the test genotypes. Methods: The data were recorded on thirteen quantitative characters for the study of genetic diversity. The mean data of each characters were subjected to cluster analysis by using D2 Mahalanobis clustering method. The principle component analysis (PCA) for measuring genetic divergence was done by XLSTAT and R 4.0 statistical package. Result: Eighty-four germplasms including checks were categorized into five distinct clusters, indicates the occurrence of high genetic diversity in the evaluated set of germplasm. Between cluster III and IV highest inter-cluster distance was observed, indicates the maximum diversity among genotypes of these clusters. Considerable differences were observed for cluster mean among different distinct clusters for all the thirteen characters. The hybridization programme involving genotypes from cluster III and cluster IV may be used to isolate suitable segregants. Principal component analysis grouped different traits under study into thirteen principal components (PCs) in which only five PCs with eigen value >1 accounted 70.97% of total variation present in genotypes. The traits falling to these five PCs may be given due importance in field pea improvement programmes.