Vol. 7, Issue 8, Part I (2025)

A comprehensive evaluation of 480 distinct accessions of forage pearl millet, employing an augmented design methodology at the Foragen Seeds Private Limited Research Farm, which is situated in Hyderabad during the kharif season of 2024. significant and positive correlation were showed for traits like plant height, panicle length, panicle girth, number of tillers, stem girth, number of leaves and leaf length. Therefore, these traits can be considered for selection of parental lines for further hybrid breeding program. The accessions taken into consideration for the study showed a broad range of genetic differentiation for forage yield component characteristics. The mean of eight traits in 480 accessions with 51.8% variances was used to extract the first three main components with eigenvalues greater than one. The first, second, and third major components yielded variances of 21.4, 16.9, and 13.4%, respectively. 480 accessions were divided into ten groups using the K-mean clustering technique, which was based on eight quantitative traits and clearly distinguished between them for each quantitative trait. Based on their parental and geographic origins, the majority of accessions were not grouped together into a single cluster. The first principal component (PC1), which explained 21.4% of the variation with the main contributing traits i.e. panicle length, panicle girth, stem girth, and leaf width was the most significant component according to PCA analysis. Based on cluster analysis, a unique accession FFPMA-110 was grouped in cluster 7 followed by accessions of cluster 9 were FFPMA-2, FFPMA-34, FFPMA-40, FFPMA-58, FFPMA-68, FFPMA-69, FFPMA-185, FFPMA-194, FFPMA-204, FFPMA-208 and FFPMA-397 therefore, breeders can use these accession directly as inbred lines and also for further hybridization with low yielding clusters like cluster 1, 3, 4, 6 and 8 for forage yield improvement in pearl millet.