INTRODUCTION

Lentil (Lens culinaris [Medik]) is the second most impor- tant food legume of winter season in Madhya Pradesh after chickpea. It is grown in about 5.0 lakh hectares with annual production of 3.84 lakh tons. Lentil con- tains 25% protein , 0.7% fat, 21% fibre and 59% carbo-

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*Corresponding Author Received 15th November, 2015

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hydrates and is rich in phosphorous and cetone (Kati- yar, 2015). The productivity of lentil in the state is only 584 kg/ha which is below national average of 678 kg/ ha. Lentil is mainly grown in marginal land with least management practices with zero (or) lease irrigation in the state. The major constrains of low productivity is unavailability of improved cultivars with wilt resistance

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Saxena, Paliya, Singh, Gautam, and Tikle

and of quality seeds. Quantitative traits provide an esti- mate of genetic diversity and various numerical taxo- nomic techniques have been successfully used to clas- sify and measure the pattern of phenotypic diversity in the relationship of germplasm collections in a variety of crops by many scientists as in lentil (Ahmad et al., 1997; Fratini et al., 2007; Tullu et al., 2008), Presently available high yielding varieties have longer duration of 120-135 days which suffer during terminal drought as few of the farmers afford to supply irrigation for the lentil crop. To combat this problem Indian Council of Agriculture Research with the cooperation of Interna- tional Centre for Agricultural Research for Dry land Areas launched the program of Pre-breeding in lentil for identification and development of lentil genotypes suitable to dry land farming. The major objectives of the project in Madhya Pradesh are –identification and development early maturing, wilt resistant genotypes through evaluation and identification of exotic acces- sions and through introgressions from the crosses of wild relatives of lentil with cultivated ones. Many work- ers emphasized the importance of genetic divergence in selection of parents for hybridization. The more diverse the parents, within the reasonable range the more would be the chance of improving the characters of question. Barulina (1930) first recorded detailed morphological descriptions of lentil landraces and species from Asia. The main characters in her study to define subspecies were pods, seeds and distinct differences in the length of flowers and secondary characters included size of leaflets, length of vegetation and height of plants. Ersk- ine, (1984) classified the world collection of lentil germ- plasm on the basis of morphological variations as days to flowering, days to maturity, plant height, seed yield, biomass yield, straw yield and 100-seed weight. Tullu et al., (2008) suggested that there was considerable genetic variation for phenological and morphological traits in the core collection of lentil that can be used to breed higher biomass and seed yielding cultivars. According to Smith, (1989) Morphological characterization is the first step in the classification and description of any crop germplasm.

About a third of the worldwide production of lentil is from India, most of which is consumed in the domes- tic market. India has the largest cultivated area of pulse in the world, but average productivity is not enough to meet the per capita requirement (Sharma, 2014). The genetic reconstruction of plant is required for developing high yielding varieties by incorporating and improving the characters. Magnitude of genetic divergence among different genotypes of species determines the spectrum of variability expected in segregating generation. In present study, genetic divergence analysis was employed to assess the genetic diversity among 100 accessions of

lentil and selecting diverse parents for future use for improvement in lentil.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The material for present investigation comprised of 100 lentil accessions of diverse ecogeographical origin. These were screened for 9 morphological yield characters. The experiment was conducted at the research field of RAK College of Agriculture, Sehore, during winter of 2012-

13.Each genotype was sown in one row plot of 4 m length with inter and intra row spacing of 30 cm and 10 cm, respectively in randomized block design with three replications. In each entry, ten plants were randomly tagged and used to collect data on nine distinct traits, namely, plant height, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, biological yield, harvest index, 100 seed weight and yield per plant following internationally recognized descriptor (Erskin, 1984). The data were subjected to sta- tistical analysis using D2 statistics (Mahalanobis, 1936) and Tocher Method as described by Singh and Choud- hary, (1977) was used for determining the group constel- lations.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

GENETIC VARIABILITY

The highest range of variability for days to 50% flower- ing was observed in the accessions of Lebanon (63-79 days), closely followed by Iran (68-83 days), while for days to maturity it was observed in the accessions of Morocco and Lebanon (103-115 days). Accessions from Iran exhibited highest coefficient of variation for pri- mary branches plant-1(19.3%) and secondary branches plant-1 (29.9%). However, the range of variation was higher for primary branches plant -1 in the accessions from Jordan, ranging from 2.0-4.3.The magnitude of variation for total number of pods plant-1 was highest (39.89%), ranging from 38.0 to 138.7in the accessions from Jordan, closely followed in the accessions from Lebanon (38.86%)., Percent of variation although was found highest (48.22%) in the accessions of Lebanon for total number of filled pods plant –1 (33-107), the range of variation was higher (31-127) in the accessions of Jordan (Table 1).

Number of un-filled pods is a trait of negative sig- nificance. The least the un-filled pods, less the seed loss per plant. On this negative ranking, accessions from Jor- dan exhibited low coefficient of variation (23.85%) for number of un-filled pods plant-1 (6.7-13.7). Maximum

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49 )CULINARIS LENS( LENTI OF GENOTYPES EXOTIC OF ADAPTABILITY

Table 1: Range and variation for yield characters in accessions of lentil from different geographical origin

Tikle and Gautam, Singh, Paliya, Saxena,

)CULINARIS LENS( LENTI OF GENOTYPES EXOTIC OF ADAPTABILITY 50

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Table 2: Correlations of yield contributing traits in lentil germplasm and proportion of variance explained by the characters

Tikle and Gautam, Singh, Paliya, Saxena,

numbers (163 seeds plant1) were found in one of the accessions of Morocco (IG 112128) and one from Egypt (158 in IG 129317). Overall seed size ranged from 2.0-3.2 g 100 seeds-1 in whole accessions. Percent of variability was highest in the accessions of Morocco (25.19%), fol- lowed in the accessions from Egypt (22.56%). The high- est grain size (3.2 g 100 seeds-1) was found in IG 129319 of Egypt. For the important trait-Seed yield plant-1, Leb- anon accessions exhibited highest coefficient of varia- tion (56.22%). However, the accession of highest seed yield plant-1 was observed in the IG 112128(4.8 g) of Morocco. This accessions had both highest number of seeds plant-1as well as seed yield plant-1(Table 1). The incidence of highly significant variation among the accessions for the majority of the studied morphological traits is a sign of the presence of high degree of genetic variation implying great potential of the accessions in future breeding programs through selection. Consider- able variations among the characters for use in breeding and selection programs have also been reported for vari- ous morphological characters by Ramgiry (1989), Sarker (2001), Sindhu (1982), Sreelakshmi (2010).

On the basis of frequency of ranking of yield and yield characters, high frequency of 1st ranking traits was observed in the accessions of Morocco (3/8), followed by in the accessions of Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (2/8).

Highest frequency of 2nd ranking traits was observed in the accessions of Lebanon (3/8), followed by Jordan and Egypt (2/8). These exotic accessions are being used in hybridization with Indian high yielding cultivars- JL 3 and JL2 for introgression of favorable yield characters. Significant positive association was observed of total pods per plant, filled pods per plant and seeds per plant with seed yield (Table 2).

Genetic diversity and relatedness

The genetic distance analysis using unweighted pair group method of arithmetic means (UPGMA) dendro- gram was constructed for measuring genetic diversity and relatedness among the accessions (Fig. 2). Cluster analysis indicated the extent of genetic diversity that is of practical use in plant breeding (Sultana, 2006). As per Group Average Classification, the genotypes formed 13 major groups + 10 single genotypic groups, while through complete linkage; it formed 21 groups + 9 inde- pendent genotypes.

In complete linkage, one of the landrace from Morocco (IG 112137) was independent of all the clusters in both- complete linkage and group average diversity. It showed its wider distance, independent of all the clusters formed. It also had the highest seed yieldplant-1. There-

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Table 4: Intra and inter cluster distances of genotypes (Based on Group average)

Tikle and Gautam, Singh, Paliya, Saxena,

fore, this accession can be used for introgression of yield in Indian cultivars. The two landraces (IG 129185, IG 129317) from Egypt also showed a separate cluster group with high yielding ability, Accession IG 12937 had high yield of 4.29 g plant-1. This accession may be used for yield enhancement in Indian genotypes. The diversity

measured on two basis (Group average and Complete linkage) showed more or less similar trends of grouping. In Group average it formed only 13+10 (independent) while in complete linkage it formed 21+9 (independent) clusters (Table 3 & Fig 1). The independent clusters hav- ing only one genotype are more or less same in both

the clustering methods. It showed that these independ- ent clusters of single genotypes are very different and diverse. These diverse genotypes independently can be used for hybridization with Indian cultivars for better introgression of genes for yield. The maturity of these cultivars is only between 107-117 days. Therefore, early maturing cultures of Indian origin can be improved for yield enhancement along with early maturity.

The intra cluster distances presented in Table 3 showed a range of 0.148 in cluster I to 0.983 in cluster XIII (Table 4). Inter cluster distances ranged from 0.974 (cluster III & X) to the highest of 2.124 (Cluster VI & XI). Exceptionally, inter cluster distance expressed between the clusters having more than two genotypes is lower than the independent genotypic clusters. This range was from 1.25 to 2.75. The highest inter cluster distance exhibited in between the genotypes of cluster VI and IG 2385 (Table 4). Genotypes of cluster VI (Lebanon IG 129214 Morocco (IG 112128) showed maximum diver- sity with many independent genotypes- IG 149 (2.58), IG 71456 (2.29), IG 2159 (2.53) and IG 482 (2.29) Table 3. It showed its wide diversity in genetic constitution of these genotypes from other ones. The genotypes included in these clusters were independent of geographical ori- gin. Singh, (2014) also used morphological markers like pods/plant, seeds/plant, 100 seed weight and seed yield/ plant to estimate genetic diversity in lentil. Gemechu, (2005), observed no definite correspondence between geographic origin and genetic diversity of lentil, Khan, (2009) in crops like field pea and safflower, suggesting that parental selection should be made on the basis of systematic assessment of genetic distance in a specific population rather than on geographic difference. Crop improvement is made through generating variability in desired traits followed by selection. Continued success in crop improvement can only be realized when new substantial variability is found and used in a popula- tion. Divergence between any two parents expresses the allelic differences between them (Dias, 2003). Cross- ing of genotypes belonging to the same cluster is not expected to yield desirable segregants. Consequently, a crossing program should be conducted with putative parents belonging to different characters. Therefore, crosses between the members of clusters separated by inter-cluster distances are likely seemed to be beneficial for further improvement (Roy, 2013). The most impor- tant traits in the first principle component could prefer- ably and mainly be represented by seed yield and pods per plant. Seed yield is the most interrelated variable to the rest of the traits. The first principle component, therefore, could be identified as yield related variables. The most significant variables of the second, third and fourth principle components included days to flowering,

Saxena, Paliya, Singh, Gautam, and Tikle

secondary branches and seed number per pod whereas the rest of the traits did not contribute enough (Abdul, 2011).

CONCLUSION

For introgression of economic important traits, it is nec- essary to measure the genetic distance in the population, the breeder is associated with. In the present investi- gation, the outstanding expression of some of the dis- tinct genotypes, which have formed a separate group of clusters, are very much important in divergence point of view. The separate clusters formed by some of the geno- types can be used to make cross combinations with gen- otypes of high divergence to obtain higher introgression of traits. The present study paved the way to identify such genotypes which would be helpful in formulating breeding strategy for improvement in yield and maturity in lentil crop.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors are thankful to International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas and Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur for providing seed material.

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