Screening for Charcoal Rot Resistance in Newly Developed Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) Genotypes and Multivariate Analysis for the Quantitative Characters

Abstract

In the present investigation thirty sesame genotypes were evaluated for agro-morphological characters to study genetic diversity among newly developed genotypes. First six principal components with eigen value more than one contributed 81.02 % of cumulative variance. The thirty genotypes were categorized into four clusters using agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis. Among the clusters, cluster I had the most genotypes (13 genotypes) followed by cluster III (11 genotypes) and cluster IV was monogenotypic. Charcoal rot leads to 5 to 60 % yield loss and is distributed in all sesame growing areas of India. The newly developed genotypes were screened for charcoal rot disease. Breeding lines viz., SES-S-19-2102, SES-S-20-3003, SES-S-20-2001 and 2 varieties CUMS-17, Swetha til recorded less than 10 % root rot infection and three moderately resistant lines viz., GT-10, SES-S-20-1038, SES-S-20-1039 recorded 10 - 20 % root rot infection. These resistant sources may serve as donor parents in hybridization programme for the development of disease resistant high yielding varieties in future crop improvement programmes.