Assessment of genetic diversity for various morpho-phenological traits in Sesame (Sesamum indicum)

Abstract

Sesame (Sesamum indicum L. 2n = 26) is considered as valuable oilseed crop known to humans since ancient times. Despite having high oil quality, sesame is grown in small area due to lack of high yielding varieties with inbuilt resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Therefore an experiment was conducted to study the genetic diversityfor yield and its component traits using 60 sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) genotypes collected from the OilseedsSection, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, during kharif 2017. Analysis of variance showed highly significant differences among the studied genotypes. Phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was found to be greater than the genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) for all the characters studied, which reflected the role of environment in the expression of the observed traits. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance was observed for number of capsules per plant and number of seeds per capsule indicating predominance of additive gene action for controlling these traits. Cluster analyses based on D2 values using Tocher’s method were used to make a dendrogram of the morphological data. The presence of genetic diversity among the evaluated germplasm will help geneticist and breeders to select diverse parents in crossing for development of high yielding genotypes of esame.