Breeding for Improvement of High Temperature Tolerance in Garden Pea (Pisum sativum L.) for off Season Cultivation

The present investigation is aimed towards breeding varieties of garden pea for early summer cultivation (March-May) that can tolerate temperatures up to 35 0C. High temperature tolerant accessions KTP-4, Arka Sampoorna, Oregon Sugar, Magadi local were crossed with Arka Ajit, Arka Pramodh, Arka Priya having superior pod quality, yield and followed by pedigree method of breeding, superior transgressive segregants from these crosses were advanced up to F 7 generation. In F 7, six selected advanced breeding lines were assessed for their performance in the field with checks during early summer for four years in succession. Results revealed significant differences between selected lines and checks wherein all the lines surpassed checks with yield ranging from 5.9-7.6 t/ ha and in checks it was only 2.6-3.1 t/ha. Among these six breeding lines, three lines were selected based on high yield (6.7-7.6 t/ha), pod quality characters and identified to be highly suitable for early summer cultivation.