Character association studies in garden pea

The experiment was conducted utilizing ten garden pea genotypes for the physiogenetical analysis of dry matter production and yield. To have a better understanding of the association between different characters, data on yield and yield contributing characters were recorded and subjected to correlation analysis. The correlation studies indicated that in general, the estimate of genotypic correlation coefficient was higher than the corresponding phenotypic correlation coefficient. It is revealed that pod yield per plant had significant positive correlation with number of pods per plant, node number of first flower, plant height and leaf area index. Days to first flowering had highly significant positive correlation with node number of first flower, days to first green pod harvest and negative significant correlation with 1000-seed weight. Number of pods per plant exhibited significant positive correlation with green grain yield per plant, pod yield per plant, biomass weight of plant and leaf area index while its association with shelling percentage was significantly negative. Hence, improvement in pod yield per plant could be achieved through selection of higher values for characters like number of pods per plant, node number of first flower, plant height and leaf area index which showed positive correlation with pod yield per plant.