“Genetic assessment of Superfood crop winged bean [Psophocarpus Tetragonolobus (L.) DC.] Under foothill condition of Nagaland’’

Winged bean [Psophocarpus tetragonolobus (L.) DC] is an important leguminous crop. It’s all parts consumed as leaves, flowers, pods, seeds and also tuberous roots because of their great nutritional values. The present investigation was carried out to assess the genetic variability, character association and path coefficient among the 40 genotypes of winged bean. The research trial was conducted at the instructional farm of the department of Genetics & Plant Breeding, School of Agricultural Sciences, Nagaland University, Medziphema, India during summer season of 2023-2024. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicates statistically significant differences at (5%) level Among all the genotypes for the yield contributing traits. It was observed that Day to 50% flowering showed high GCV, PCV, Genetic Advance, and Genetic Advance % of mean coupled with the highest heritability followed by green pod weight and number of secondary branches. The character association indices at genotypic and phenotypic levels clearly revealed that seed index, number of pods per plant, pod length, and number of seeds per pod, are significantly positive correlated with seed yield per plant. The path coefficient analysis clearly exhibited the highest positive direct effect of seed index on seed yield per plant. The traits viz. Day to 50% flowering, number of secondary branches, green pod weight, and Seed yield per plant exhibited high heritability and high GCV, PCV, Genetic Advance and Genetic Advance as % of mean. It provided a direction to focus on the traits such as seed index, pod length, seeds per pod and secondary branches to improve the selection efficiency. There is tremendous potential in the local genotypes viz. Local Wokha-2 and Local Pangti-2 of the Winged bean for genetic improvement under the foothill condition of the hill state owing to its popularity and commercial viability owing to their outstandingly at par performance with that of released varieties viz. VRWB-17 and VRWB-23.