Assessment of lentil germplasm with respect to agromonic performance and major biotic stress

Characterization and evaluation of lentil germplasm (Lens culinaris Medikus) collected from indigenous and exotic sources for flowering (61–123 days), maturity (108-147days), plant height (18–70.80cm), pods per plant (9–158), primary branches/plant (2–6), root-knot nematode, fungal and viral diseases revealed considerable variation for different agro-morphological traits and level of tolerance against biotic stress of both macrosperma and microsperma types. Besides exhibiting a wide range of variation in important agro-morphological traits by all the wild species, Lens nigricans and Lens ervoides emerged as valuable sources of resistance to several biotic stresses namely, Ascochyta blight, rust and powdery mildew diseases. A new germplasm line (ILL-4605) identified earlier than Precoz in flowering (55–62 days) and may prove very useful in the lentil improvement programmes for the development of varieties with bolder seeds (> 3.5 g/100g) and earlier maturity (110 days) as well. Such germplasm lines, which mature 20–25 days earlier than the landraces of North India will be useful and can be adopted for different cropping systems. Adoption of identified short duration, early maturing and bold seeded germplasm may help in heat and drought escape which otherwise would have resulted in abortion of flower buds and subsequently low crop yield. A range of trait specific germplasm identified for different agro-morphological characters are, early flowering (IC-560333, IC-559639, IC-560111 and IC-560148), high biomass (IC-559744, IC-559608, IC-559767 and IC-560040), high yielding (IC-398094, IC-560212, IC-560332 and IC-560206) and high number of primary branches (IC-559870, IC-318881, IC-398688 and IC-560182) might be good option under unpredictable environmental situations. Occurrence of symptoms resembling to those of virus diseases were noticed in many germplasm accessions.