Morphological Diversity of Parkia roxburghii, G. Don in Manipur

Fourteen different morphological characters were studied to understand the nature of variability among the 24 genotypes of Parkia roxburghii grown in different agro-climatic zones of Manipur. The estimates of PCV and GCV indicated existence of fairly high degree of variability for seed weight, stalk length, pod weight and seed thickness. Genotypically, stalk diameter was found to be highly positively correlated with pod breadth, pod thickness, pod weight, seed length and seed breadth, while pod breadth was found to be positively correlated with pod thickness, pod weight, seed length, seed breadth and seed weight. Phenotypically, the same trend was observed in all the characters studied though with lesser values. The clustering pattern revealed that there has been no association between genetic diversity and geographical diversity. Cluster II with 8 genotypes exhibited maximum intra-cluster distance (112.7) indicating that the genotypes in this cluster are more diverse than the other clusters. The maximum inter-cluster distance was observed (508.81) between cluster I and cluster V indicating wider genetic diversity between the genotypes in these groups. Canonical analysis revealed that the cultivars, PRB 1 of cluster V and PRB 24 of cluster III are cultivars having considerable divergence between them. The characterization thus would help in the identification of varieties and their future utilization for varietal improvement programme using conventional techniques of selection and hybridization.