Genetic diversity is essential for genetic improvement of any crops. The common problems in Bangladesh are the low yield of lentil probably due to the lack of genetic variability. Therefore, an experiment was carried out to evaluate twenty lentil genotypes for eleven yield and yield contributing characters by studying genetic diversity. Genotypic variance (σ2g), phenotypic variance (σ2p), phenotypic co-variance (PCV), genotypic co-variance (GCV), heritability, genetic advance, genetic advance as a percentage of mean, correlation coefficient and path coefficient were estimated. A significant genetic variation was observed for all the traits viz., days to first flowering, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of primary branches plantˉ1, pods peduncleˉ1, pods plantˉ1, seeds plantˉ1, seeds podˉ1, 100-seed weight and seed yield plantˉ1. Significant differences of PCV were higher than GCV for all the traits indicated that the traits are less influenced by the environment. The highest estimates of GCV and PCV were observed for seed yield plantˉ1 (23.80% and 24.03%, respectively) followed by number of pods peduncleˉ1 (16.91% and 19.80%, respectively) and number of seeds plantˉ1 (19.48% and 19.63% respectively). All the studied traits expressed high heritability ranging from 64.89% to 98.46% and the maximum was recorded for seed plant-1 (98.46%) followed by pod plant-1 (998.35%) and seed yield plant-1 (98.10%). High heritability along with high genetic advance was noticed for number of pods plantˉ1 (98.35% and 50.63, respectively) and number of seeds plantˉ1 (98.46% and 96.01, respectively) and high heritability coupled with high genetic advance as per cent of mean was observed for number of number of seeds plantˉ1 (no.) (98.46%, 39.80%) followed by number of pods plantˉ1 (no.) (98.35%, 33.03%) and seed yield plantˉ1 (g) (98.10%, 48.56%) reflected the accumulation of additive gene which could be used for the improvement of lentil through selection. The study of associations among the different traits revealed that seed yield plantˉ1 was significantly and positively correlated with number of primary branches plantˉ1, pods plantˉ1 and seeds plantˉ1 and 100-seed weight. Path analysis also reported that number of pods plantˉ1 and seeds podˉ1 and 100-seed weight was related to the seed yield mostly through the direct positive effect. Therefore, number of primary branches plantˉ1 and pod plantˉ1, and 100-seed weight should get the major importance for lentil yield improvement as those traits had positive and significant correlation as well as direct positive effect with seed yield plantˉ1. The information of wide genetic diversity among the genotypes for all the traits could be used in future systematic lentil breeding programs for the improvement of seed yield.
Key words: Lentil, Landraces, Genetic variability, Correlation, Path analysis
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