Genetic Divergence for Seed Yield Enhancing and Quality Traits in Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.]

Background: Pigeonpea has remarkable contribution in flourishing the Indian agricultural economy but over the decades, its productivity has remained stagnant. Presence of genetic diversity in breeding population is the key to develop high yielding varieties. Therefore the current study was aimed to explore genetic divergence among pigeonpea genotypes.Methods: A set of 178 pigeonpea germplasm lines were evaluated in randomized block design to assess the genetic divergence and clustering pattern of pigeonpea genotypes. Observations on various yield component traits were recorded. For the estimation of the Fe and Zn content ICP-OES (Perkin Elmer USA) was used. Mahalanobis D2 analysis was carried out to assess the genetic divergence.Result: Wide range of genetic diversity was revealed among lines for eleven traits studied. Mahalanobis D2 analysis grouped all the genotypes into eleven non-overlapping clusters. The inter cluster D2 values indicated that cluster IV and XI (21046.45) were the most diverse and cluster V and cluster VII (60.67) were the less diverse. Out of the eleven characters studied days to maturity, plant height and yield per plot contributed 93.32 per cent of the total divergence. Based on mean performances, cluster XI and cluster II were found to be beneficial for early flowering and early maturity genotypes, cluster V and cluster VII for number of pods per plant and yield per plot, respectively. The highest mean value for grain iron and zinc content was recorded in cluster III rendering simultaneous improvement for these traits. Therefore, trait-wise selection of diverse parents from different clusters would be desirable and beneficial.