Evaluation of Advanced Lentil Lines for Diversity in Seed Mineral Concentration, Grain Yield and Yield Components.

Lentil is one of the most important grain legumes, which plays a significant role in human nutrition and animal feed through the world. In developing countries, the prohibitively high cost of meat has rendered, lentil, with its high seed protein and essential amino acid content, important source of dietary protein. In this research, 181 lentil advanced lines (F7 generation) of Karacadağ x Silvan and Karacadağ x Çağıl 2004 crosses were evaluated for grain yield, yield components and seed mineral concentrations in two diverse environments in Turkey. Considerable diversity was observed with regard to yield components and seed mineral concentrations in the advanced lentil lines. The greatest phenotypic diversity was observed in the biological yield, number of pods and weight of pods per plant, the number of seeds and weight of seeds per plant, and seed Ca, Zn and Fe concentrations. Grain yield per plant was significantly positively correlated with the biological yield per plant, number of pods per plant, weight of pods per plant, and number of seeds per plant. Plant grain yield and yield components were strongly positively correlated with seed potassium (K), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and zinc (Zn) concentrations but was negatively correlated with Fe concentration. In conclusion, promising lentil advanced lines for the grain yield, yield components and mineral concentrations could be evaluated for developing new lentil varieties and spesific breeding purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]