Assessment of Genetic Divergence in Pea (Pisum sativum L.) Genotypes in Western U.P

The present investigation was carried out with 20 genotypes of pea (Pisum sativum L.) at Horticulture Research Centre (HRC) of SVPUAT, Meerut, U.P, during 2021-22 to identify the nature and magnitude of genetic divergence among genotypes based on phenotypical traits using the multivariate analysis. The experiment was laid down in randomized block design (RBD) with three replications. The experiment has ten observations based on five randomly selected plants from each replication. D2 analysis grouped all 20 varieties into five clusters revealing the presence of considerable amount of variation among genotypes. Cluster pattern revealed that, clusters I and II had the highest number of 5 genotypes succeeded by cluster III with 4 genotypes, cluster IV and cluster V containing three genotypes each. Maximum intra cluster distances were recorded in cluster I (D2 =2.264) indicating maximum difference among the genotypes within the cluster and minimum intra cluster distance was recorded in cluster V (D2=1.481) whereas, Maximum inter-cluster distance (D2=5.211) was observed between cluster II and IV and the minimum was observed (D2=2.373) was observed between cluster III and V. The cluster means revealed the cluster IV was the best cluster for various characters like plant height, number of pods per plant, pod length, days to maturity and pod yield, providing upon the aim of breeding. Hence the potential genotype can opt from different clusters as parents.