Genetic Analysis For Earliness And Yield Traits in Garden pea (Pisum sativum L.)

The experimental materials comprised of 28 F(1)s generated by crossing 8 diverse genotypes of garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) in a diallel mating design. The set of 28 crosses along with their eight parents were evaluated in a randomized block design with three replications at the Vegetable Research Block, Hill Campus, Ranichauri, Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand, India to study the gene action for earliness and yield traits in garden pea (Pisum sativum L.). Analysis of variance revealed the presence of highly significant differences among experimental genotypes indicating that the parents were diverse for the characters studied. The prevalence of over dominance was observed for most traits except for node number at which first flower appear. However, additive and dominance genetic variance were highly significant for days to 50 % flowering and days to first harvest. For green pod yield per plant the regression line was linear and slope (b= 0.2532 +/- 0.1734) of regression varied significantly from unity suggesting the prevalence of non-allelic interactions. Low estimates of narrow sense heritability indicated the presence of non-additive gene action for most traits except for days to 50 % and days to first harvest. These characters also exhibited medium to high level of heritability and the selections in segregating generation could be effective for evolving early maturing types.