Garden pea (Pisum sativumL.) is a self-pollinated plant species which played an important role for the foundation of modern genetics. Genetic diversity among 56 garden pea genotypes was assessed using 12 morphological descriptors, 19 quantitative traits and 8 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. Eight morphological descriptors were found polymorphic, and highest Shannon diversity index was recorded for pod curvature (1.18). Mahalanobis D²illustrating genetic divergence arranged 56 genotypes into six clusters, with the highest inter-cluster distance between clusters IV and VI (18.09). The average values of Na (number of alleles), Ne (effective number of alleles), I (Shannon’s Information index), PIC (polymorphism information content), Ho (observed heterozygosity) and He (expected heterozygosity) were 3.13, 1.85, 0.71, 0.36, 0.002 and 0.41, respectively. Pair wise genetic distance among all pairs of the genotypes varied from 0.33 to 1.00 with an average of 0.76. Based on genetic distance, the genotypes were classified into two main clusters (A and B) by cluster analysis, whereas structure analysis divided the genotypes into four sub-populations. The SSR makers indicated that present of genetic variability among the studied genotypes. When, we compared the groups formed by agro-morphological and molecular data, no genotypes were observed, indicating that both stages of characterization are crucial for a better understanding of the genetic variability. Hybridization between genetically diverse genotypes can be exploited to expend the genetic variability and introduce new traits in the pea breeding program.

Low genetic diversity acts as a major bottleneck in garden pea breeding, and diverse parents are required to generate new genetic material. The diversity of parents utilized in hybridization programme was ascertained following simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. Thirty-six homozygous F₇ progenies were isolated from three intervarietal crosses through shuttle breeding programme over a period of 6 years (2009–2014). Two experiments were conducted for two consecutive years 2014/15 and 2015/16, for evaluating the agronomic performance of progenies along with four commercial control cultivars. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that genotype, growing year and their interaction had significant effects on most of the traits. Line ‘DPP-SP-6’ recorded significantly higher pod yield/plant in comparison to all other genotypes in 2014/15, 2015/16 and for pooled over years. In addition, ‘DPP-SP-22’, ‘DPP-SP-7’ and ‘DPP-SP-17’ also performed statistically at par with best-performing check ‘Pb-89’ during both the years. These superior lines, in general, showed better pod filling, green pod colour, high shelling, sweetness and resistance to powdery mildew disease. These superior progenies could act as an alternative to the popular check varieties after their exhaustive evaluation over environments.

An experiment comprising seven treatments was conducted to study the effect of boron and lime integrated with organic manures and nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) fertilizers on garden pea productivity. Seed yield along with growth parameters were significantly influenced by combined use of farmyard manure and NPK fertilizers either alone or in combination with boron and lime. Treatment combination of 20 t farmyard manure / ha + 100% NPK + borax (T₄) resulted in 37% increase in seed yield over recommended practice of 20 t farmyard manure / ha + 100% NPK (T₃). In addition, recommended practice supplemented with granubor (T₅) and lime (T₆) also significantly surpassed T₃ with respective increase of 14 and 10% in seed yield. Similarly, maximum nutrient was observed in T₄. Hence, application of boron along with farmyard manure and NPK fertilizers could be the best option to maximize pea productivity in acidic soils under humid subtemperate climate.