Genetic diversity analysis and development of a candidate set of genotypes from large collection of Indian germplasm in lentil

Lentil is an important pulse crop. Large collection of lentil germplasm is available, but these genetic resources could not be utilized properly in breeding program because of non-availability of phenotypic data on these accessions. Therefore the germplasm set of 1525 accession was studied and a candidate set of 237 accessions was developed. The level of genetic variability of constituted candidate set was compared with level of diversity of large collection for eight non-parametric and parametric traits. Our results showed no significant differences for genetic variability between these two groups suggesting that constituted candidate set of lentil germplasm has captured adequate variability and reflected the true representation of 1525 lentil germplasm collection. Therefore this candidate set can be used effectively in identification of donors for trait of interest and can be further utilized in breeding program.