Genetic variability is essential in plant breeding for crop adaptation in a specific environment, enhancing yield potential, creating resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, improving quality attributes, and most importantly, selecting desirable and better parents for hybridization programs. The study was designed to ascertain the genotypic diversity of 54 accessions of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea). The study evaluated these accessions/genotypes for 13 different traits (morphological, yield, and oil quality) under the rainfed climate of Pakistan. Significant differences were observed for all studied traits. Likewise, significant difference in the percent coefficient of variability (CV%) was also found for these traits. The research included classifying the genotypes further into six different clusters using the Ward method. Principal component analysis was performed that showed variability in components for different traits. The first five principal components (PCs) showed an eigenvalue of more than one that contributed about 71.83% of the total observed variation. Major characters accounted for by PC1 included pod weight per plant, grain weight per plant, and the number of pods per plant. PC2 positively contributed to oleic acid and shelling percentage, PC3 contributed positively to dry pod yield, plant height, and days to flower initiation, and PC4 contributed for days to 50% flowering, the number of pods per plant, and dry pod yield. These data on genotypic diversity for studied traits in the recent investigation will help breed new groundnut lines to strengthen germplasm sources for cultivar development in rainfed areas of Pakistan.

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is negatively affected by drought stress at all the growth stages, including germination and seedling emergence. The recent study aimed to investigate the drought-tolerant Kabuli chickpea genotypes at the seedling stage under osmotic stress conditions. An in vitro screening technique evaluated the 120 different genotypes of Kabuli chickpea for drought tolerance by using different concentrations of polyethylene glycol (8000) solution, viz., T0: Control, T1: -0.19 MPa, and T2: -0.47 MPa, arranged in a completely randomized design. Data were recorded on germination percentage, root length, shoot length, seedling length, root/shoot ratio, dry matter, seedling vigor index, and proline content. The results of a pooled analysis of variance revealed significant variability among genotypes, different polyethylene glycol treatments, as well as, between genotypes and treatments. The increase of polyethylene glycol levels negatively affected most of the parameters under study, except for proline content, which increased with an increase in polyethylene glycol concentration. The study results indicated that the advanced lines, 15KCC-106, 13KCC-114, 6KCC-103, GP-37, FS-10, and 12KCC-106, performed better under different osmotic stress conditions and gained selection as drought-tolerant advanced lines at early seedling stage. These advanced lines suitably combine with their desirable traits to cope with the drought condition and can serve as a baseline for the improvement of Kabuli chickpea breeding material for drought tolerance.