New Research Article Received :- Biotic and abiotic stress tolerant grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.): breeding prospects towards food and nutrition security under changing climate. Rupsanatan Mandal, Chandrasekhar Chatterjee, Raghunath Sadhukhan, Gurupada Sarkar, Nirmal Mandal1, Rajib Nath2 Department of Genetics, BCKV 1 Department of Biotechnology, BCKV Abstract Grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) is an annual legume crop valued for its high seed protein content, high yield potential, good degree of adaptability under extreme agro climatic conditions. Its tolerance to abiotic stresses like drought, submergence, degraded soil and biotic stresses like weeds, pests, diseases along with high nitrogen fixation and low input requirement for cultivation are most desirable in the context of food ‘insecurity’ vs. ‘climate change’. Estimation of genetic diversity and variability is the prime factor to augment breeding to exploit heterosis or to generate recombinants in isolating superior types of such high valued crop. In the present investigation, 221 lathyrus genotypes were evaluated for variability in morphological characters, character association and genetic divergence. The study was carried out in simple randomized block design with two replications at agricultural research farm of Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya. The genotypes exhibited high variability for the characters like plant height, secondary branch number, pod per plant, dry biomass, days of 50% flowering and yield per 10 plant and crude protein content except primary branch number and seed per pod. The characters viz. days to 50 per cent flowering, plant height and dry bio mass exhibited high heritability coupled with a high to moderate genetic advance indicating that simple selection scheme would be sufficient for these traits to bring genetic improvement in desired direction. Pod per plant and dry biomass exhibited direct positive effects in contrast to direct negative effects of plant height, secondary branch number and days of 50% flowering on seed yield per 10 plants. It would be rewarding to lay stress on these characters in selection programme for increasing yield. Based on Mahalanobis D² statistics method, 221 genotypes were grouped into 12 divergent clusters, cluster XI had the maximum number of 69 genotypes followed by cluster II, i, iii, iv and VI. Diversity among clusters showed inters cluster distance in the range of 4.75 to 93.55. Cluster VIII and XII showed maximum inter cluster distance of 93.55. The lowest inter cluster distance was noticed between clusters VI and VIII (4.75). Results indicating wide genetic variability to select accessions from clusters having high inter cluster distance and also with high grain yield with high protein content as parents in the recombination breeding programmes. From the clusters analysis the genotypes can be divided into three groups like grain type (cluster-IX), fodder type (cluster-VIII & XI) and dual purpose (cluster-VII) genotypes. These results for a hardier crop like grass pea offer ample scope to attain food, nutrition security under awakening threats of climatic and commercial changes. Key words: D2 Statistics, Diversity, Cluster, Crude Protein, Dual purpose Crop
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:33:17 +0000
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