Studies on genetic divergence in lentil

An investigation was carried out at Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur during 2003-04, Thirty genotypes were used in the study. The main objective of the experiment was to study the genetic variation, heritability, correlation of different characters and their effect on yield in lentil. The genotypes were classified into clusters on the basis of genetic relatedness and divergence using D2 statistics/Highly significant differences were recorded among the varieties for all the eight charactes studied. Maximum diversity as well as heritability was found for no. of branches plant. The genetic advance under section was also maximum for the no of fruiting branches/plant Test weight and grain yield/plant were also highly heritable and the genetic advance under selection for these traits were also high. Days to maturity was highly influenced by days to flowering. Grain yield was found highly correlated with test weight. No. of fruiting branches, which was found highly heritable, has been found to be strongly correlated with no. of pods/plant, After cluster analysis, the strains under study were grouped into 5 clusters, The inter-cluster distance ranged from 7.45 to 11.07 and intra-sluster distance ranged from 4.13 and 8.75 indicating a vast scope of hybridization between the genotypes in order to create variability.