EXPLOITATION OF MULTIVARIATE TECHNIQUES FOR EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT LENTIL GENOTYPES AGAINST FUSARIUM WILT DISEASE

The present studies were designed to evaluate 30 genotypes including a susceptible check against fusarium wilt disease of lentil. Various multivariate approaches were employed to find out the genotypes having resistance/tolerance against fusarium wilt disease of lentil. The outcome of principal component analysis revealed the major role of first two principal components which contributed 64.8% to the total variability. The results of association analysis showed the positive significant association of plant height with pod number and yield per plant and negative highly significant association with disease percentage. Analysis of variability showed highly significant results of all parameters studied. The minimum and maximum value for pods per plant was 104.7 and 488.7 respectively. The mean minimum and maximum yield ranged from 4 g to 28.67 g. For disease infestation minimum disease was 10.07% and maximum was 99.60%. While employing cluster analysis 4 clusters were found. Minimum disease was found in cluster 2 and maximum disease percentage was found in cluster-1. For pod number and yield the genotypes in cluster 3 performed very well though they had moderate susceptibility. The outcome of this experiment yielded excellent findings while utilizing multivariate analysis and we can combine genotypes from cluster 3 for pod number and yield per plant and cluster 2 for disease tolerant genotypes aimed at improving yield and disease tolerance simultaneously.