DIVERSITY AND ECOLOGICAL NICHE MODELLING STUDIES IN Trifolium repens L. (WHITE CLOVER) IN THE REGION OF NORTH-WESTERN HIMALAYA, INDIA

Trifolium repens L., commonly referred as white clover, is one of the important stoloniferous perennial range legume growing in temperate regions. The introduction of forage legumes in agro-ecosystem provides nitrogen enrichment in soil and mobilizes other nutrients. Further, it has a tremendous potential to help rehabilitate temperate grasslands and decrease the severe fodder shortage in the Himalayan region. In recent decades, collecting and exploration of forage species germplasm, including white clover, have been in the focus of researchers. The collected material shall act as a safe repository for different improvement programmes in future as the germplasm has been stored in the Long Term Module of the National Gene Bank. In this study, maximum entropy (MaxEnt) technique of niche modelling was used to explore probable new areas for the collection of white clover germplasm and identify favorable climate for characterization, cultivation, evaluation and on-farm conservation in the Indian Himalayan region, which comprises the of Jammu Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Significant variation was observed in plant height (15.5 to 37.6 cm), floret number per flower head (9.24 to 52.4), 100 seed weight (0.038 to 0.077), dry matter yield per plant (6.2 to 15.1 g), leaf length (15.6 to 48.4 mm), leaf width (11.2 to 39.6 mm). Very highly significant variation was also observed in 'V' marking. Dendrogram grouped the 22 accessions into two clusters based on the average linking method. Cluster I consisted of five accessions (IC-615818, IC-615817,IC-622352, IC-615815, and IC-622362), cluster-II could be grouped into sub-cluster-IIA and sub -cluster-IIB. Cluster IIA consist of six accessions (IC-622338, IC-622379, IC-622382, IC-622401, IC-622343 and IC-62237), whereas cluster-IIB comprise of 11 accessions (IC-615814 IC-615811, IC-615819, IC-622376, IC-622383, IC-615812, IC-622385, IC-615816, IC-615817, IC-622415 and IC-622406). In this study, maximum entropy (MaxEnt) technique of niche modelling was used to explore probable new areas for the collection of white clover germplasm, identifying favorable climate for characterization, cultivation & evaluation and on-farm conservation in the Indian Himalayan region comprising the Union Territory of Jammu Kashmir and the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.