Caracterización de variedades de lenteja mediante marcadores morfológicos.

Lentil breeding requires a population base with genetic variability for agronomic traits. The purpose of this study was to evaluate qualitative and quantitative traits in 11 accessions of lentils from different regions to detect variability inter-accession to bring new material from their hybridization. The multivariate methods allowed us to group those accessions which showed higher similarities for qualitative traits. Quantitative variables were analyzed using principal component analysis to determine which characters cause the largest variation between the varieties. The days to flowering, leaf number, pod width, seed size, pod length, petiole length, and height of insertion of first pod accounted for 80% of the total variation observed. Three groups of varieties similar to each other were made up in order to enable a better planning of the crosses necessary to obtain the desired variability in the segregant population. Group 1 (5 varieties) was characterized by a low number of pods per plant and low weight, while group 2, consisting of a single variety, had a high number of pods per plant and high weight, which makes it an important group for the selection of parents for yield; and group 3 (5 varieties) yielded an intermediate number of pods with high seed weight early in the season.