Studies on Character Association and Casual Relationship of Seed Yield and Its Components in Early Maturing Genotypes of Pigeon Pea (Cajanus cajan L.)

Abstract

The present investigation was undertaken with the objective to estimate the interrelationship of characters for seed yield in early maturing genotypes of pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan L.). The material consisted of twenty-one pigeon pea genotypes among which nineteen were early maturing genotypes received from ICRISAT (The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics), Hyderabad and two were local varieties collected from BNCA, AAU (Biswanath Chariali College of Agriculture, Assam Agricultural University), Jorhat. The experiment was conducted during kharif 2017-18 in randomized block design (RBD) with three replications at ICR farm, Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat. The estimates of genotypic correlations, in general, were found higher than the corresponding phenotypic correlation coefficients indicating strong association between two characters but the phenotypic values were lessened by the influence of environment. The seed yield per plant had shown significant positive correlation with plant height, pods per plant, pod length and harvest index both at phenotypic and genotypic level. Pods per plant and pod length had shown high positive direct effects on seed yield per plant at both genotypic and phenotypic level. At genotypic level, days to first flowering exhibited maximum positive direct effect on seed yield per plant. Pods per plant and pod length had shown high direct effects on seed yield/plant and hence direct selection for these traits may contribute towards improvement in seed yield/plant.