Characterization of grass pea (Lathyrus sativus L.) germplasm collections for beneficial agronomic traits

At ICARDA, germplasm collections obtained from five countries namely, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Syria, Nepal and Pakistan were grouped in to seven sets of trials (BANG1, BANG2, ICARDA, ETH1, ETH2, NEP, PAK) and evaluated in two experimental locations, Tel Hadya and Breda over eight years. Characterization was done for the most desirable agronomic traits such as days to first flowering, days to 95% maturity, biological yield, seed yield, hundred seed weight and harvest index. Significant genotypic and interaction effect were found for the expression of the traits. Substantial amount of variability was revealed in the germplasm collections for most of the traits. High broad sense heritability was observed for days to first flowering and hundred seed weight indicating early phenotypic selection of these two traits. The stability over years for the seed yield (in terms of the CV), identified promising accessions such as ILG2178 in BANG1 and ILG1721, ILG1632, ILG1624, ILG1540 and ILG1501 for future breeding