Vol. 9, Special Issue 12, Part L (2025)

The present investigation was carried out to elucidate the interrelationships among seed yield per plant and associated agronomic traits through correlation and path coefficient analyses in seventy field pea (Pisum sativum L. var. arvense) genotypes were evaluated across four environments (E-I, E-II, E-III, and E-IV) at the Breeder Seed Production Unit (Soybean), Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, JNKVV, Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh). Correlation analysis revealed that seed yield per plant showed highly significant positive associations with biological yield per plant, plant height, number of nodes per plant, number of effective nodes per plant, and number of pods per plant across all environments and in pooled analysis. Among these, the number of pods per plant showed the strongest correlation with seed yield (r=0.773-0.825 across environments; r=0.863 pooled), confirming its pivotal role in yield determination. Biological yield per plant emerged as the most influential component, with correlation coefficients above 0.95 across all the environments, underscoring that total biomass production predominantly governs yield potential in field pea. Path coefficient analysis further revealed that biological yield per plant exerted the highest positive direct effect on seed yield (1.003-1.067 across environments; 0.893 pooled), followed by harvest index (0.164-0.251 across the environments; 0.230 pooled) and pod length (0.011-0.042 across environments; 0.019 pooled). These results suggested that seed yield improvement in field pea can be effectively achieved by selecting genotypes with high biological yield, superior partitioning efficiency, and higher pod number.