GROUPING GENOTYPES AND TEST ENVIRONMENTS BY SOME CLUSTER METHODS REGARDING GENOTYPE x ENVIRONMENT INTERACTION IN MULTI-ENVIRONMENT TRIALS

Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) is an important source of protein and carbohydrate food for people of developing countries and is popular in some developed countries where they are perceived as a healthy component of the diet. Ten lentil genotypes were tested for grain yield in five different environmental conditions, over two consecutive years to classify these genotypes for yield stability. Seed yield of lentil genotypes ranged from 989.3 to 1.367 kg ha(-1) and the linear regression coefficient ranged from 0.75 to 1.18. The combined analysis of variance showed that the effect of environment (E) and genotype by environment (GE) interaction were highly significant while the main effect of genotype (G) was significant at 0.05 probability level. Four different cluster procedures were used for grouping genotypes and environments. According to dendograms of regression methods for lentil genotypes there were two different genotypic groups based on G plus GE or GE sources. Also, the dendograms of ANOVA methods indicated 5 groups based on G and GE sources and 4 groups based on GE sources. According to dendograms of regression methods for environments there were 5 different groups based on G plus GE sources while the dendograms of ANOVA methods indicated 9 groups based on G and GE sources and 3 groups based on GE sources. The mentioned groups were determined via F-test as an empirical stopping criterion for clustering. The most responsive genotypes with high mean yield genotypes are G2 (1145.3 kg ha(-1)), G8 (1200.2 kg ha(-1)) and G9 (1267.9 kg ha(-1)) and could be recommended as the most favorable genotypes for farmers.