Identification and divergence studies of genotypes of Tamarindus indica (Fabaceae) with superior pod traits

Tamarind (Tamarindus indica L.) crop improvement depends on availability of diversity in the germplasm collection. An evaluation of 35 genotypes of tamarind was carried out to assess variability and character association and to identify diverse genotypes with superior pod traits. Variability studies for pod traits revealed that, genotype CPT–9 was desirable for eight traits and genotype CPT–26 exhibited the lowest values for six traits. A wide spread of variation was observed for pod weight (9.5 - 83.7 g), pulp weight (4.8 - 51.2 g), seed weight (2.4 - 12.2 g), shell weight (2.3 - 18.1 g), pod length (9.0 - 25.5 cm) and pod width (1.8 - 5.5 cm). Higher estimates of heritability for pod traits such as shell weight, pod weight, pulp weight, and vein weight coupled with higher genetic advance indicated possibility of progress by selection. Pulp weight per pod showed highest positive genotypic and phenotypic correlations with pod weight (rg = 0.99, rp = 0.98), vein weight (0.92, 0.91), shell weight (0.93, 0.91), pod length (0.89, 0.79), pod width (0.92, 0.86), and pulp: seed ratio (0.81, 0.77). The first three Principal Component (PCs) explained large portion (85.53 %) of the total variation. Clustering analysis resulted into two broad clusters. Genotypes in cluster-2 (CPT–1, CPT–2, CPT–3, CPT–9, CPT–10, CPT–11, CPT–17, CPT–22, and CPT–33) had combination of desirable traits and can be directly selected for further improvement by breedin