Assessment of Genetic Diversity in Nigella (Nigella sativa L.) Collections Using Principle Component Analysis

Seventeen land races of Nigella along with one released variety (Rajendra Shyama) as a check; collected at farmer’s field from different parts of Bihar were evaluated in Randomized Block Design with three replications at Seed production Farm, TCA, Dholi, Bihar during Rabi 2015-16 to identify diverse Nigella genotypes. Principle component analysis (PCA) showed that first three PCs had >1.00 Eigen value and accounted to 84.71% of total variation. Rotated component matrix for various traits revealed that PC1 was strongly associated with secondary branches/plant followed by yield/plant, length of fruit, fruit per plant, primary branches/plant, height of the plant, days to 50% flowering and grains/plant. The traits that mostly contributed to PC2 were grains/plant followed by height of the plant and width of fruit whereas, days to maturity followed by width of fruit, height of the plant, days to 50% flowering and length of fruit contributed mostly to the PC3. The characters that contributed most to the PC4 were height of the plant, fruit/plant and length of fruit. Therefore, intensive selection procedures can be adopted to bring about rapid improvement of above mentioned traits. The k-mean of different clusters indicated that genotype falling in cluster III possess high values for all the traits under study indicating their potentiality as a parent in hybridization programmes for further improvement of Nigella. Highest inter-cluster distance was noted between cluster III and V indicating the genetic diversity among genotypes of these two clusters. Therefore, genotypes from these two clusters are recommended to use in hybridization programmes for further improvement.