Agromorphological Diversity and Disease Assessment of Grain Amaranth in Lamjung, Nepal

Amaranth is a nutritious traditional food and vegetable crop with incomparable health benefits. However, very little research has been carried out to study diversity of amaranth in Nepal. An experiment was conducted in the research field of the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS) at Sundarbazar, Lamjung, Nepal, during 2021 growing season to assess twelve amaranth accessions based on agromorphological characters. Seed materials were collected from the Nepal Agriculture Genetic Resource Center (NAGRC), Khumaltar, and the experiment was conducted in alpha-lattice design with 3 replications. Early maturing accessions had inflorescence at 42.33 days while late maturing accessions were after 82 days. ANOVA test for quantitative traits revealed significant differences among the accessions for all traits studied except stem girth. Similarly, from frequency distribution of agromorphological characters, high variability was found in stem pigmentation, terminal inflorescence shape, inflorescence color, and seed color. Diversity indices (Shannon–Weaver diversity index and Simpson’s index of diversity) were also estimated in which inflorescence color, terminal inflorescence shape, seed color, stem pigmentation, leaf shape, branching index, and leaf pigmentation exhibited high variation confirming the presence of tremendous diversity in Amaranthus. Accessions NGRCO 6977, NGRCO 6969, and NGRCO 6871 had low disease incidence showing the potential of developing resistant varieties through précised breeding in the future. High yield attributing traits were possessed by accessions NGRCO 6977, CO 2435, NGRCO 6904, and CO 1239. Accession NGRCO 6977 was found superior among twelve accessions with highest grain yield and least disease occurrence which can further be evaluated in successive years as a promising variety in mid-hill region.