GENETIC DIVERGENCE FOR YIELD AND YIELD CONTRIBUTING CHARACTERS IN MUNGBEAN (Vigna radiata L.)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study on genetic divergence for yield and its contributing characters among 32 genotypes of mungbean. The study was carried out at the experimental field of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka- 1207 during period of March to July, 2015. The results indicated that the genotypes differed regarding all the characters studied. The phenotypic variance was higher than genotypic variance in all the characters studied. The phenotypic coefficients of variation were also higher than genotypic coefficients of variation in all the characters studied. Moderate to high heritability was observed for all characters. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance in percent mean were observed for peduncles per plant, pods per plant, 100 seed weight and seed yield per plant. The characters peduncle per plant and pods per plant showed highly significant positive correlation with seed yield per plant. Days to 50% flowering, branches per plant, branch length, peduncles per plant, pods per plant, seeds per pod and 100 seed weight showed positive direct effect on yield. All the genotypes were grouped into five clusters having 10, 10, 5, 5 and 2 genotypes, respectively. Cluster I and II comprised the maximum number (10) of genotypes followed by cluster III and IV (5). The cluster V comprised 2 genotypes. The highest inter-cluster distance (42.06) was observed between the clusters III and cluster IV and highest distant genotypes were G11 and G22 followed by G32 and G27. The lowest inter-cluster distance was observed (18.05) between the clusters between clusters I and II, The lowest distance was observed between genotype G8 and G9. Among the characters studied peduncles per plant, pods per plant, 100 seed weight, seed yield per plant were major characters that contributed most towards genetic divergence.