Morpho-physiological Diversity to Evaluate Dry Summer Adaptability of Pearl Millet

Abstract

Pearl millet germplasm lines, viz., 17 cytoplasmic male sterile lines and 83 inbred lines, were evaluated for 15 different morpho-physiological traits. The correlation analysis revealed strong positive association of days to 50% flowering and maturity (0.66, 0.15) with grain yield. Significant positive association between water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC) and grain yield (0.17) depicted that WSC is a good indicative for selecting genotypes for summer cultivation. Principal component (PC) analysis showed five PCs having eigenvalue >1 explaining 74.72% of the total variation with number of tillers, WSC, stover yield, days to 50% flowering and days to maturity being the most important characters in PC1. Dendrogram based on Euclidean dissimilarity revealed two main groups at linkage distance of 354.80. The group A consisted of all CMS lines, and group B consisted of all the Punjab Inbred Bajra (PIB) lines. The germplasm lines were grouped into 11 clusters. All the test CMS lines and inbreds BDRC-1, PIB-200-P2, PIB-680, PIB-802, PIB-920 were identified as potential genotypes for summer cultivation.