Genetic Parameters, Genetic Association and Principal Component Analysis of Yield and Yield Contributing Traits in Ricebean (Vigna umbellata)

Ricebean (Vigna umbellata) is a minor pulse crop mainly cultivated for food, fodder and green manure. The assessment of variability is essential pre requisite for formulating an effective breeding programme, as the existing variability can be used to enhance the yield level of cultivars.

The present experiment was carried out during rabi season 2022–23. The experiment was carried out using Augmented design II at Department of Pulses, Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore.

Morphological characterization of ricebean genotypes revealed the presence of low variability for the qualitative traits except for growth habit, twining tendency, terminal leaflet shape and stem pubescence. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance as per cent of mean was noticed for the following traits viz., number of pods per plant (95.56, 63.92), number of clusters per plant (87.58, 52.88), number of primary branches per plant (70.29,32.77), hundred seed weight (97.32, 26.29) and single plant yield (90.76, 43.36). The traits viz., number of pods per plant (0.881), number of clusters per plant (0.720), pod length (0.326), number of seeds per pod (0.311), plant height (0.257), number of primary branches per plant (0.196) and hundred seed weight (0.192) exhibited significant positive association with single plant yield. PCA analysis revealed that the following traits viz., number of pods per plant, single plant yield, number of clusters per plant, number of seeds per pod and pod length contributed maximum to the genetic variability. In addition, it also earmarked the best performing genotypes for each biometrical trait. Hence, the above findings could be effectively utilized for the development of ricebean cultivars with desirable plant type.