VARIABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR SOME MORPHO-YIELD TRAITS AMONG ELITECHICKPEA (Cicer arientinum L.) GERMPLASM

Intensity of selection, unintended ways of domestication and natural changes increase the frequency of deleterious alleles, impart genetic drift and reduce diversity in plant genetic resources. Existence of genetic variability for different morphological traits among genetic material is highly valuable for survival of a species. We addressed this need in chickpea, an important pulse legume, by investigating the elite chickpea germplasm under the agro-climatic conditions of Gram Breeding Research Station, Kallurkot, Punjab, Pakistan during rabi 2019-20. Fifty elite chickpea germplasm entries along with two standard check varieties were studied under tri-replicate randomized complete block design. Data were subjected to D2 statistics, principal component analysis and cluster analysis. Results revealed wide dispersion of data for range, standard deviation and coefficient of variation indicating the presence significant variability among the germplasm entries. Principal component analysis revealed that first two components extracted higher Eigen values with significant contributions in creation of genetic variation. PCA also revealed that number of pods, root length, 100 seed weight and yield kg ha-1 exhibited higher positive loadings in construction of PC1 and PC2.Cluster analysis distributed the germplasm entries into four distinguished clusters. Ward’s dendrogram constructed on the basis of Euclidean distance showed that the members of cluster-III and IV were most diverse in performance of different studied traits. Mean performance of different traits in cluster analysis also showed higher values for number of pods, root length, 100 seed weight and yield kg ha-1 were found in cluster-III. Therefore, the members of cluster-III (GP-01937, GP-17215, GP-16929 and Punjab-2008) possess the best genetic constitution of yield related traits and may be preferred while making selections for chickpea genetic improvement program.