Exploring Genetic Diversity in Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is one of the most important legumes for consumption in India as well
as worldwide. In grain legumes, it ranks second in acreage and third in production with productivity of
913 kg/ha. India is the largest producer of chickpea, accounts 70.9% of the world cultivated area and
produces 67.1% of the total world production. D2 statistical analysis is a tool which measures the
degree of divergence among the population. Multivariate analysis with “Mahalanobis D2 statistics” a
strong tool to know the pattern of clustering to verify the relationship between genetic and geographic
divergence and to discover the importance of different quantitative traits towards the maximum
divergence. The present investigation was undertaken to study the nature and magnitude of genetic
diversity among chickpea genotypes. The experimental material comprised of forty genotypes of
chickpea in Rabi 2016-17 at Pulse Research Farm, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour (Bhagalpur).
The experiment was laid in a randomized complete block design with three replications during Rabi
with the inclusion of the recommended packages and practices needed for a healthy crop. Analysis of
variance revealed highly significant differences among the forty genotypes for all the characters
studied indicating that significant amount of genetic variability present in the material. The cluster I
had maximum eleven genotypes followed by cluster VI, 08 genotypes, cluster III, 07 genotypes and
IV having five genotypes, while cluster II and V had four genotypes, respectively. The cluster VII was
mono-genotypic having one genotype. The intra-cluster D2 value ranged from 0.00 to 25.16 while,
inter-cluster D2 value ranged from 30.73 to 204.05. The maximum intra cluster distance was exhibited
by cluster V followed by cluster I and cluster IV. The maximum inter-cluster distance was observed
between cluster II and VII (204.05), followed by cluster II and V (170.79) and cluster III and V (157.56)
suggesting that the genetic architecture of the genotypes in one cluster differ entirely from those
included in other clusters. The genotypes BAUG 108, H12-63, RKG13-380, AKG1303 and KWR108
were identified as genetically diverse parents, which can be utilized for future crop improvement
programme in Chickpea. The above results indicate that these genotypes have maximum genetic
diversity and useful for developing a large number of segregants through crossing programme by
using maximum diverse genotypes.