Newly isolated intervarietal garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) progenies (F7) under north western Himalayan conditions of India

Abstract

AbstractLow genetic diversity acts as a major bottleneck in garden pea breeding, and diverse parents are required to generate new genetic material. The diversity of parents utilized in hybridization programme was ascertained following simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. Thirty-six homozygous F7 progenies were isolated from three intervarietal crosses through shuttle breeding programme over a period of 6 years (2009–2014). Two experiments were conducted for two consecutive years 2014/15 and 2015/16, for evaluating the agronomic performance of progenies along with four commercial control cultivars. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that genotype, growing year and their interaction had significant effects on most of the traits. Line ‘DPP-SP-6’ recorded significantly higher pod yield/plant in comparison to all other genotypes in 2014/15, 2015/16 and for pooled over years. In addition, ‘DPP-SP-22’, ‘DPP-SP-7’ and ‘DPP-SP-17’ also performed statistically at par with best-performing check ‘Pb-89’ during both the years. These superior lines, in general, showed better pod filling, green pod colour, high shelling, sweetness and resistance to powdery mildew disease. These superior progenies could act as an alternative to the popular check varieties after their exhaustive evaluation over environments.