Assessment of Inter-Relation & Multivariate Analysis for Horticultural Traits in Garden Pea (Pisum sativum var. hortense)

The garden pea is the major food legume & ranks fourth in terms of production worldwide. However, the production of garden peas is influenced by genotypes & environmental conditions. Thus, the present study was carried out to identify the most suitable genotypes for various horticultural traits in garden peas. Seven genotypes of garden peas were evaluated at two different sites and at two different dates of planting. The results revealed significant variability in different horticultural traits under study. Pod length, number of seeds per pod & average pod weight had highly significant positive & strong relations with pod yield per plant. This suggests that these traits can be used as a reliable selection criterion for improving pod yield. Principal component analysis revealed a cumulative variation of 93.10% with more than one eigenvalue for important traits across different genotypes. Pod length, pod diameter, number of seeds per pod, average pod weight & yield per plant were found to be important traits toward PC1, while in PC2, plant height showed the maximum positive loading. The PC3 allowed maximum positive loading for the number of nodes to first flower & days to first pod harvest. Based on cluster analysis, cluster I contained 57.14% of genotypes, while cluster II had the lowest number (0.14%) of genotypes. Thus, hybrids resulting from diverse crosses are thought to exhibit a large amount of variability & have ample scope to identify or isolate transgressive segregants in the advanced generation.