Abstract Sterility mosaic disease (SMD) is a major biotic constraint in almost all pigeonpea growing areas caused by eriophyid mite transmitted pigeonpea sterility mosaic virus (PPSMV). Direct selection for resistance to SMD is expensive and laborious as it requires dependent of sick plots. Identification of easily assayable and simply inherited morphological traits such as leaf anatomical traits would enable increased efficiency of breeding pigeonpea for SMD resistance. A set of 70 pigeonpea accessions were evaluated for 12 leaf structural features such as leaf thickness (LT), upper epidermal thickness (UEPT), lower epidermal thickness (LEPT), upper cuticle cell wall complex (UCWC), lower cuticle cell wall complex (LCWC), trichome number on upper surface of leaf (TNUS), trichome number on lower surface of leaf (TNLS), trichome length on upper surface of leaf (TLUS) and on lower surface of leaf (TLLS) at experimental plots of Zonal Agricultural Research Station (ZARS), UAS, Bengaluru. The accessions differed significantly for most of the traits except for specific leaf area (SLA) and specific leaf weight (SLW). The accessions were grouped into four clusters, with significant differences in cluster means and variances. Principal component analysis (PCA) showed first three PCs explaining 69.70 % of the total variation and morpho-anatomical traits such as leaf thickness (LT), trichome length on upper (TLUS) and lower (TLLS) surface of leaf were the most important characters for disease incidence. Furthermore, correlation of all the leaf traits in relation to percent incidence (PDI) indicated only TLLS having significant negative correlation (-0.456*) with SMD incidence. While, trichome length also showed higher phenotypic (PCV) and genotypic (GCV) coefficient of variation 34.33 and 34.02, respectively and broad senesce heritability (98.2%) coupled with high genetic advance (69.45). Therefore, breeding for trichome length is very important to impart vector resistance. This may provide broad based resistance to all the isolates of SMD in pigeonpea
