A cluster analysis of Ricebean (Vigna umbellata (Thumb.) Ohwi and Ohashi) Accessions with Specified NaCl Salt Concentration at Seedling Stage under Controlled Conditions

The Ricebean is still seen as a crop that is underappreciated and mistreated. The term salinity describes the buildup of soluble salts in soils, which results in saline soils. The Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, West Bengal, India, used a completely randomized block design (CRBD) and a factorial pattern with three replications to conduct this experiment in a growth chamber. In the specified salt concentration of 120 mM of NaCl salt, data were gathered on a variety of seedling growth traits. D2 values should be lower within a cluster than between clusters. The distance between clusters within cluster III (462.54) is the highest, followed by cluster II (294.43) and cluster I (55.88). As a result, these two groups are more diverse, and hybridization between genotypes in these clusters would facilitate gene transfer. The gap between clusters III and II, VI and I, and clusters VI and IV had the largest intra-cluster distance. The shortest inter-cluster distances were between clusters IV & I, V & I, and V & II. Except for leaf fresh weight, shoot dry weight, root dry weight, and leaf dry weight and on germination percentage, relative reduction of dry weights, tolerance index (TI), and salinity susceptibility index (SSI) of various seedling traits, genotypes belonging to cluster I were found to have the least relative reduction for most characters. Therefore, it may be assumed that the genotypes KRB-10, KRB-271, KRB-189, KRB-273, KRB-77, KRB-81, KRB-95, and KRB-70, which belong to this cluster I, will be tolerant to salinity. Similar to this, twelve genotypes from cluster IV—KRB-56, KRB-211, Bidhan-1, KRB-73, KRB-102, KRB-66, KRB-272, KRB-104, KRB-274, KRB-44, KRB-39, and Bidhan-2—had the highest relative reduction for the majority of the characters. The aforementioned results showed that although the majority of the Ricebean genotypes under investigation had a wide range of individual qualities, when the constellation of traits was considered as a whole, they also belonged to different groups.