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

Intensity of selection, accidental domestication, and natural changes increase the frequency of harmful alleles, cause genetic drift, and limit plant genetic diversity. The existence of genetic variety for various physical features among genetic material is extremely important for a species' survival. During rabi 2019-20, we investigated elite chickpea germplasm under the agro-climatic conditions of Gram Breeding Research Station, Kallurkot, Punjab, Pakistan, to meet this demand in chickpea, an important pulse legume. A tri-replicate randomised complete block strategy was used to study fifty elite chickpea germplasm entries and two standard check varieties. D2 statistics, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis were used to analyse the data. The results demonstrated a broad range of data dispersion for range, standard deviation, and coefficient of variation, showing that the germplasm entries had high variability. The first two components extracted larger Eigen values and made major contributions to the formation of genetic variation, according to principal component analysis. In the construction of PC1 and PC2, PCA demonstrated that the number of pods, root length, 100 seed weight, and yield kg ha-1 had larger positive loadings. The germplasm entries were divided into four distinct clusters using cluster analysis. Ward's dendrogram, based on Euclidean distance, revealed that members of clusters III and IV were the most diverse in terms of performance on the many qualities tested. Cluster-III had higher values for number of pods, root length, 100 seed weight, and yield kg ha-1 in the mean performance of multiple traits in cluster analysis. As a result, members of cluster-III (GP-01937, GP-17215, GP-16929, and Punjab-2008) have the best genetic constitution for yield-related variables and should be chosen when selecting chickpeas for genetic improvement.

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