Analysis of Divergence at different Developmental Stages under Drought Stress in green gram (Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek)

Drought is the major probem that causes severe reduction in yield as the plant faces severe moisture and temperature strees. To enhance the area of mungbean cultivation under drought prone region it is important to understand the response of mungbean for different morphophysiological and biochemical traits under drought condition inorder to formulate effective breeding programme. In the current investigation, Twenty-five genotypes of mungbean were evaluated in randomized block design with three replications along with three levels of water stress i.e. Control, drought stress at the vegetative stage, and drought stress at the reproductive stage during the summer season of 2020 & 2021. When all the characters were considered simultaneously, significant differences among twenty-five genotypes were observed as the ‘V’ statistic value was highly significant. During both the years under control and stress conditions, these twenty-five mungbean were grouped into six clusters. The intra-cluster D2 values ranged from 0.00 to 21.86 under the control condition, while it was 0.00 to 36.77 under drought at the vegetative stage condition and 0.00 to 29.62 under drought at the reproductive stage condition. Under control and drought at vegetative stage condition, during both the years, leaf area contributed the maximum to the diversity by taking first rank out of 300 combinations respectively while in drought at reproductive stage condition, seed yield & 100 seed weight contributed the maximum to the diversity during summer 2020 & 2021 respectively. Selection of divergent parents based on these characteristics might be useful in the formulation of a breeding program for drought tolerance as well as it will help in obtaining a large number of transgressive sergeants in subsequent generations.