Faba Bean (Vicia faba L.) Germplasm Evaluation and Genetic Divergence Analysis

The present investigation was carried out involving sixty-seven germplasm lines evaluated of faba bean, normal soil under irrigated condition with three check varieties viz., PRT7, PRT12 and Vikrant. Seed yield per plant showed highly significant and positive correlation with harvest index and biological yield per plant. Biological yield per plant exhibited highly significant and positive correlation with days to maturity. Days to maturity and number of pods per plant via biological yield per plant exerted substantial positive indirect effect on seed yield. The nine clusters in divergence analyses contained genotypes of heterogeneous origin, thereby indicating no parallelism between genetic and geographic diversity. Therefore, crosses between the members of clusters separated by high inter-cluster distance are likely to throw desirable segregants. Maximum inter cluster distance was recorded between cluster IV and cluster IX. However, maximum intra-cluster distance was observed in cluster I. The different clusters showed considerable differences in intra-cluster group means of eleven characters and genotypes having distinctly different mean performance for various characters were separated in to different clusters