PHENOTYPIC DIVERSITY OF FINGER MILLET (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) GENOTYPES

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at Hill Crops Research Program (HCRP), Kabre, Dolakha under Nepal Agricultural Research Council, Nepal (NARC), during rainy season of 2018 with objective to identify the level of genetic difference present in the finger millet genotypes being cultivated for selecting genotypes in different agro-climatic region in Nepal using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, cluster analysis and principle component analysis. P value of REML procedure revealed that significant variation was observed in 16 finger millet genotypes for baring head, days to 50% flowering, days to 50 % heading, days to 75 % maturity, finger length, flag leaf length, plant stand, plant height, number of finger, peduncle length, no of productive tiller, thousand grain weight, grain yield and straw yield showed selection and development of suitable varieties for different agro-climatic region of Nepal. Traits baring head, finger length, number of fingers, flag leaf length, peduncle length, productive tiller, thousand kernel weight, plant stand, straw yield were positively correlated with grain yield revealed that selection within this is importance for improvement grain yield. Cluster I consists up six early mature genotypes named as KLE-178,GE-0383, ACC#6022,GE-0382,KLE-0150,ACC#0124 can be used to development of early mature genotypes for mountain regions where chilling stress occurs at maturity period whereas similarly cluster II, III and IV consisted up 10 late mature genotypes named as ACC#2843, ACC#2860, ACC#8827-1,Sailung-Kodo1,NE-1703-34,KLE-236,ACC#2311,GE-0356, farmer’s variety, GE-0480 can be used to develop high yielding late mature varieties for mid hill and terai regions these genotypes may be of interest to researcher for selection of materials for breeding program in different agro-climatic region of Nepal.