Investigating the Morphological Variation in Cultivars and Lines of Lentil (Lens sp. Medik.) Based on the Agronomic Traits

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Hajar Badri ¹

Zahra Tahmasebi ¹

Mahdi Geravandi ²

¹ Agronomy and Plant Breeding Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Ilam University, Ilam, Iran

² Sararood Branch, Dryland Agriculture Research Institute (DARI), AREEO, Kermanshah, Iran

10.22067/ijpr.2025.94275.1113

Abstract

Introduction
Lentil, known as Lens culinaris Medik., is an annual legume belonging to the family Fabaceae. In 2020, lentil global production reached to 5.6 million tons when Canada located in first place with 45%, followed by India with 18%. Iran ranks 12^th in the world while has less than 1.2% share in production of this important crop. There is a high diversity of agronomic traits in lentil, the study of which is of great importance. Determining the characteristics of germplasm in terms of desired traits facilitates the creation of breeding populations designed to achieve specific goals.
 
Materials and Methods
In this study, 70 international genotypes and three control varieties (Bile-Sawar, Kimia, and Mahali) were cultivated in the first year in an augmented design with three replications for controls and in the second year in an alpha-lattice design with replication. The experiment was conducted under autumn cultivation conditions at the Dryland Agriculture Research Institute (DARI), Sararood, Kermanshah, during the crop seasons of 2022-23 and 2023-24. The traits studied under field conditions included plant height, number of days to flowering and maturity, number of pods per plant, grain filling period, grain weight, and yield. The data were used for multivariate analysis by using GEA-R. Cluster analysis was done by Ward's method with the Euclidean distance criterion by hclust function in R software. Regarding the day to flowering and maturity with the grain filling period, lower values ​​were the selection criteria. For the other characteristics, high values ​​were desirable. Selection intensity was considered 15% for all MGIDI traits. For indexing estimation, the R item in the metan software package was used.
 
Results and Discussion
The results of analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed the difference between the genotypes and controls. For investigation significant difference among the other genotypes with the controls, the value of LSD should be the given. Based on this, for all of traits except PH, DM, and NPP, the differences were significant at the level of 1% and 5%. According to the results, there was significant variation in yield-related traits among the studied genotypes. About the plant height (genotypes G21 and G8), number of days to flowering “genotypes G13, G17 and M2, M12”, number of days to maturity “genotypes M20 and M7, M12, M33, M24, G4”, number of pods per plant “genotypes G30 and G1”, grain filling period “genotypes G32 and G4, M29”, grain weight “genotypes M24 and M31”, and yield “genotypes M22 and M26” showed a favorable situation compared to the others in the two seasons, respectively. Based on cluster analysis, two different groups (29 to 44 and 17 to 56) were formed in the two seasons, respectively, which were different from each other. In general, the Mediterranean genotypes showed better position than the globals and controls in terms of studied traits. In addition, there was a significant variation in terms of grain yield-related traits in the studied genotypes, which allows the selection of superior genotypes from among them. Results of correlation coefficient of the studied traits are also given. Yield in the first year was positively correlated with the number of days to maturity and grain weight and in the second year with plant height and number of pods per plant, and negatively correlated with other traits. The number of pods per plant, a key determinant of yield, was positively correlated with days to maturity, grain filling period, plant height, and plant weight in the first year, and with the grain filling period in the second year. Across both seasons, this trait showed negative correlations with other measured parameters. A dendrogram of cluster analysis based on the morphological and agronomic traits of the lentil genotypes is also presented.  In this dendrogram, a total of two groups were made and different genotypes were placed inside them. The number of genotypes in each group differs each season (44 to 29 and 56 to 17 in two seasons), which are shown with different colors. In this case, genotypes that were closest in terms of height, flowering and maturity period, number of pods per plant, weight, and yield were placed in one cluster, and those that were more different were placed in the opposite cluster.
 
Conclusions
According to the results of this study, the trait of pod number per plant plays an important role in lentil grain yield under autumn cultivation conditions.

Keywords

Agronomic characteristics

Augmented and Lattice designs

Dryland conditions

Legumes

Subjects

• Agronomy

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Authors retain the copyright. This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

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