Dry Pea (Pisum sativum L.) and Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik) Varieties Yield Performance and Stability in Montana.

The interest of farmers to grow dry pea and lentil is increasing year to year in Montana. Besides diversifying crops in the state, increased acreage of these crops has diverse benefits to sustain the cropping systems. Availing information on the yield and stability performance of the different varieties of these crops is essential. The objectives of these experiments (pea and lentil variety evaluation) were to evaluate yield performance and stability of dry pea and lentil varieties and environments in Montana. The experiments were conducted at different sites in randomized complete block design from 2009 to 2011 coordinated by Central Agricultural Research Center of Montana State University. Eight varieties of dry pea in 21 environments and 12 varieties and lines of lentil in 18 environments were included. Additive multiplicative interaction and genotype by environment interaction (GxE) analysis on grain yield was done using R statistical software. Analysis of variance indicated that GxE was significant both for dry pea and lentil. Very large percentage (93% for dry pea and 89% for lentil) of the total variation was explained by environment. Similarly, the percentage of variation explained by GxE was larger than variety effect. This indicates the presence of diverse environments and management practices in the testing sites. Across all environments, the mean maximum grain yield recorded were 3.85 t ha^-1 of dry pea at Western ARC and 2.84 t ha^-1 of lentil at Northwestern ARC. Similarly, the variety CDC Golden (dry pea) and Avondale (lentil) resulted in mean maximum yield compared to other varieties across sites. Partitioning of the interaction effects into principal components and biplot graphs will be discussed to evaluate grain yield performance and stability of varieties and environments.