Variability and character association studies in faba bean

Germplasm comprising of 203 accessions (exotic as well as indigenous) on faba bean was evaluated with an objective to study the genetic variability, association between the yield and yield contributing traits and to identity the promising accessions in respect of various quantitative traits. The characters seed yield, pods/plant, branches from basal node and higher nodes showed a variation of over 32% whereas days to maturity and days to flowering showed a poor variation to the tune of 5% only. Multiple correlation and regression analysis revealed that plant height was significantly negatively correlated with the seed yield. However, the multiple linear regression model could account for only 8.0% of the variation in seed yield suggesting that the linear model is not an appropriate choice in this case based on the phenotypic performance, promising accessions were also identified.