Diversity in Lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) germplasm for morphology, yield and molecular markers and their correlations

Abstract

Lucerne is an important legume forage grown worldwide due to its high nutritive value, yield potential, quality and survival under highly contrasting environments. Estimation of genetic diversity in germplasm is an important criterion in breeding programme and is done based on phenotypic characters, biochemical and molecular markers. Thirty one accessions of Lucerne collected from Maharashtra and Gujarat were evaluated for morphological, yield characters, molecular markers and were compared with national check RL-88. The diversity analysis of morphological and yield characters indicated wide range of variation within the accessions. The accession RLG 08-1 recorded significant differences for plant height, number of tillers per plant, internodal length, green fodder, dry matter and crude protein yield (P less than 0.05) over RL-88. Green fodder yield was significantly correlated with plant height (0.72**), no. of tillers per plant (0.71**) and internodal length (0.71**). Dry matter yield was found significantly correlated with plant height, no. of tillers per plant, internodal length and crude protein yield (0.70**, 0.69**, 0.70** and 0.99**). Leaf stem ratio was not linearly correlated with green fodder, dry matter and crude protein yield. Principal component analysis (PCA) demonstrated that the first two PCs contributed to 93.7% of total variance among the accessions. The accession RLG 08-1 was found superior among all the accessions. Thirteen Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSRs) markers showed 82.8% polymorphism. The dendrogram revealed slight geographical structuring and RLG 08-1 was found genetically distinct from other accessions.Mantel correlation was not observed between morphological and yield characters as well as molecular markers.