Evaluation of Pea (Pisum sativum) Cultivars for Morphological Traits under the Agro-Climate of Upland Balochistan

Abstract

Pea is being a leguminous crop, contains high amount of protein and have all essential amino acids particularly lysine. In Pakistan the cultivation and production of peas are very low as compared to other developed countries of the world. The present study was conducted at Directorate of Agriculture Research Vegetable Seed Farm ARI Sariab for assessing the performance of locally grown pea varieties. The experimental trial was laid in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) consisting of five cultivars namely Classic, Climax, Meteor Faisalabad, Aleena Pak and Sarsabz, replicated in thrice and 15 selected and tagged plants from each experimental unit were used for data collection. The mean square variances of measured morphological traits showed highly significant (P < 0.01) differences among pea cultivars for all most all characters expect for plant height. This indicated that studied materials have sufficient genetic variability. The correlation analysis indicated that all traits were positively and significantly interlinked with each other, while the relation of seed emergence showed negative association with all yielding traits. Overall, two varieties viz., Classic and Climax performance superior over Meteor Faisalabad, Aleena Pak, and Sarsabz. Thus, identified suitable varieties should be used for general cultivation or may be utilized in breeding programs as a parents for developing new high yielding pea varieties for upland adjoining areas of Balochistan.