Genetic competition among lentil (Lens culinaris) candidate lines for yield and yield components under rainfed conditions

An experiment to evaluate performance of newly developed candidate lines of lentil (Lens culinaris) was conducted at Arid Zone Research Institute, PARC, Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan during 2011-12. Fourteen candidate lines were tested against well existing lentil varieties namely, Punjab Masoor-09 and Markaz-09. The trial was laid out in RCBD with three replications. The results revealed that lentil lines involved in present study showed highly significant variability in all the major agronomic traits. Days to 50% flowering ranged from 80.67 to 114.67, plant height from 29.67 to 38.67 cm, number of secondary branches/plant from 4.67 to 8.67, number of pods/plant from 24.33 to 75, days to maturity from 147 to 162, 1000 seed weight from 19.57 to 32.50 grams and grain yield per plant from 13.80 to 27.95 grams. The line NARC-08-2 proved its superiority with some desirable traits like, medium plant height (38.67 cm) and normal maturity period (155.67 days) and higher grain yield per plant (27.95 g). It was generally observed that plants with medium height, intermediary in flowering and maturity and with higher number of pods were quite pertinent for higher grain yield. The magnitudes of PCV were higher than GCV indicating the influence of environment on genotypes. Remarkable difference was observed between PCV and GCV for various traits under study. High heritability estimates (b.s) were calculated for number of branches (60.10%), 1000 seed weight (64.30%), days to maturity (85.30%) and seed yield (96.10%). The characters showing low broad sense heritability seem to be highly influenced by environmental effect. High h2 coupled with high genetic advance (GA) was assessed for days to maturity and seed yield thereby indicating the presence of additive gene effect for these traits.