Morphological characterization and assessment of genetic diversity in pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.] germplasm

Abstract

A total of 243 genotypes of pigeonpea were evaluated during Kharif, 2019 on the basis of DUS and D2-cluster analysis. Pigeonpea genotypes were grown in the augmented design for evaluation. Morphological characterization was done based on plant descriptors for pigeonpea at different stages of plant growth. The cluster analysis grouped all the genotypes into six clusters. The clusters I, II, III, IV, V and VI had 32,3,9,79,115 and 5 genotypes, respectively. The inter cluster distance was maximum between cluster II and VI (240.47) followed by cluster I and II (231.37). On the basis of cluster mean values cluster II was superior for the character pods/plant (340.90) as well as in yield/plant (59.4). The genotypes included in cluster VI were early with short plant height. The study revealed that the diverse genotypes viz; AH 06-09, AH 14-01, AH 16-36, PADT-16 and HDM 04-01 could be used in hybridization programme to develop high yielding, early genotypes with short plant height.