Variation for Leaf Characteristics and Relationship with Grain Yield and Seed size In Pigeon Pea Saxena K. B., Sharma D. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru Post Office, 502 324, Andhra Pradesh, India Abstract Five leaf characters, namely, leaf fresh weight, petiole fresh weight, leaf area, petiole length, and specific leaf weight were studied in 27 pigeon pea cultivars and in an F1 diallel set involving nine diverse parents, representing early, medium and late maturity groups, to determine the extent of variation for these characters and their inheritance. Also, the relationship between these leaf characters and yield, days to flowering, and seed size was determined to identify those leaf characters that might be easily used as selection criteria for yield. Griffing's diallel analysis showed that GGA variances for all the leaf components were very high and SCA non-significant, which indicated that the additive genetic component of variance was predominent for this population. Long duration cultivars generally had more leaf area, higher leaf weight, and greater petiole length than early and medium duration ones. Seed size was found to be positively associated with all the leaf characteristics (r=0–57 to 0–67 for different traits). Except petiole fresh weight, all characteristics of individual leaves had positive phenotypic and genotypic association with yield. The genotypic correlation coefficients ranged from 0–27 to 0–58 for the characters studied. The multiple correlation coefficient (R=0 • 66; p = • 01) with yield as dependent variable indicated that factors other than leaf characteristics affected grain yield to a great extent. Therefore, though leaf characters had a positive association with yield, the predictive value of any single leaf component was not high enough to be of practical use in a breeding program. Top |