Abstract

Pea (Pisum sativum L.) is a field crop cultivated in most countries of the Arabian Peninsula for both food and fodder consumption during winter. This paper presents the results of indigenous germplasm collections in Oman and assessment of their seed diversity. 27 seed samples/accessions of field peas were collected during collecting missions of indigenous legume crops from 2008 to 2011. South Batinah-coastal governorate represented by Rustaq (15) had the highest, followed by Dhahira & Buraimi governorates (8), Al-Dakhliya (Interior) governorate (2), Sharqiya (eastern) governorate (1) and North Batinah-coastal governorate (1). Seed accessions were found diverse for three seed traits and seed color. Seed length varied from 0.305 cm to 0.720 cm whereas seed width varied from 0.295 cm to 0.690 cm. 100-seed weight ranged from 4.500 g to 21.9 g. With respect to seed color, six accessions viz. Collection No. 25 (tan-light), No. 78 (dark green, mottled), No. 82 (light green), No. 173 (dark green, dark brown, mottled), No. 178 (brownish green, mottled) and No. 314 (cream, light pink) were homogenous (pure) whereas the remaining 21 seed accessions were heterogeneous (mixture) with various colors such as white cream, cream, light green, tan, light brown, dark brown and black with mottled nature. The collections were grouped into 10 genetically diverse clusters based on the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using seed traits which revealed significant contribution of seed length (34.378%) and 100-seed weight (34.182%) to the total variation existing in indigenous field pea germplasm collected across all the governorates of Oman.

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