Morphological and ssr marker based diversity analysis of lentil (Lens esculenta) genotypes using yield and yield contributing characters

Lentil is an important pulse crop with high nutritional value and high market price worldwide. Molecular markers have emerged as useful tools to assess the genetic diversity across crops. The study was conducted to explore genetic diversity of twenty lentil genotypes considering yield and yield attributing traits. Among all genotypes, BARI Masur-6, BARI Masur-7 followed by genotypes BD-3806 and BD-4090 showed the highest value of yield attributing traits therefore, these genotypes are considered as best performer. The results of cluster analysis based on the Ward's method grouped the genotypes into three clusters and the genotypes of cluster III revealed the maximum value for yield per plants which indicated their importance in the selection for yield improvement program of lentil. Afterwards, 20 genotypes were evaluated through 7 sets of SSR primers to assess genetic diversity among the genotypes. Among them, four sets of primers viz., SSR 19, SSR 33, SSR 90 and SSR 213 showed high polymorphism which suggesting the greater genetic diversity in the genotypes. The unweighted pair group method of arithmetic mean (UPGMA) dendrogram based on Nei's (1973) genetic distance led the genotypes into four major clusters which showed a bit deviation with the morphological cluster. The findings of this study will be very useful for selection of appropriate parents and the genetic understanding for the set up for future systematic lentil breeding programs.