Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Sodic Soil-grown Barnyard Millet (Echinochloa frumentacea (Roxb.) Link) Germplasm

Abstract

Aims: Barnyard millet (Echinochloa frumentacea) is a significant tiny millet crop characterized by because of its high nutritional value, exceptional ability to withstand extremes of climate, and short duration. Globally, the area under salt affected soil is expanding. Therefore, genetic diversity analysis was conducted to identify genetically diverse genotypes for yield improvement under sodic condition.
 Study Design: Randomised block design.
 Place and Duration of Study: An experiment was carried under sodic soil condition at Anbil Dharmalingam Agricultural College and Research Institute, Trichy, Tamil Nadu.
 Methodology:  Ninety two genotypes of barnyard millet, including two commercial check varieties, MDU1 and CO (KV) 2. Plant height (cm), inflorescence length (cm), inflorescence width (cm), lower raceme length (cm), flag leaf length (cm), flag leaf width (cm), number of leaves on main tiller, number of productive tillers per plant, and grain yield per plant (g) were the nine quantitative traits that were recorded. GENRES software version 3.11 was used for analysing the data.
 Results: For all of the analysed attributes, the genotypes showed significant differences based on the analysis of variance. Ninety two genotypes were divided into nine groups according to nine quantitative features using Mahalanobis D2-Statistics. Cluster II was the one with the greatest number with 25 genotypes, followed by cluster V with 22 genotypes, Cluster VI with 17 genotypes, Cluster IV with 11 genotypes, Cluster I with 8 genotypes, Cluster VIII with 4 genotypes, Cluster III and VII with only 2 genotypes per cluster, and Cluster IX with just 1 genotype. Cluster IV was second in terms of intra-cluster distance, after Cluster VIII. The largest inter-cluster distance was observed between clusters I (TNAUF01000021 - EF 37, TNAUF01000022 - EF 38, TNAUF01000022 - EF 39, etc.) and IX (MDU1).
 Conclusion: Choosing these genotypes as parents from genetically diverse clusters for breeding programmes might produce heterotic hybrids that produce enough genetic diversity in barnyard millet genotypes under sodic soil conditions.