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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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Author: Banniya, Mahi × End date: 2019 × Start date: 2019 × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Genetic divergence evaluation in tomato using morpho-biochemical characters and microsatellite markers
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, Samastipur, 2019) Banniya, Mahi; Kumar, Mithilesh
    A study was conducted to determine the genetic variation and divergence among 24 genotypes of tomato using three different parameters namely morphological, biochemical and molecular. The morphological observations were recorded on randomly selected five plants for plant height at maturity, number of Primary branches per plant, number days to 50% flower initiation, number of days to 50% fruit initiation, number of flowers per cluster, number of fruits per cluster, number of fruits per plant, number of locules per fruit, polar diameter of fruit, equilateral diameter of fruit, number of days to fruit maturity, fruit yield per plant, total soluble solid and ascorbic acid content of fruit and shape and size of fruit. Among 24 genotypes of tomato 16 best performing genotypes were selected for molecular characterization. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among the genotypes evaluated in respect of all the characters under investigation. Invariably, a narrow magnitude of difference between phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation was noticed for all the characters with the exception of number of primary branches per plant, number of fruits per plant and yield per plant. A narrow magnitude of difference indicate comparatively less environmental influence on these characters. Exploitable amount of genetic variability among the genotypes for various characters was observed number of fruits per plant, yield per plant, plant height at maturity, number of fruits per cluster, polar diameter and equilateral diameter of fruit, TSS and ascorbic acid content of fruit.Among the other characters studied, number of flowers per cluster, number of locules per fruit, number of primary branches per plant, had moderate value of genotypic coefficient and high to moderate estimates for heritability in broad sense and/or genetic advance as percent of mean. Using hierarchical cluster analysis, twenty four genotypes were classified into four separate and well characterized groups on the basis of taxonomic distance. Numerical taxonomic approach for classification of entries made it possible to discern subtle differences between entries at different phenon level. Thus the numerical taxonomy appeared to be more potent to distinctly discriminate the entries for their use in recombination breeding programme. Hierarchical cluster analysis, numerical taxonomic approach were supported by principal component analysis. Genetic polymorphism was observed in sixteen genotypes of tomato at the molecular level by implication patterns generated by twenty two microsatellite primers. All 22 primer pairs were found to be polymorphic revealing 87 allelic variants including 18 unique and 69 shared alleles with an average of 3.95 alleles per primer, showing the polymorphic nature of the primer pairs. Polymorphic information content of these primers ranged from 0.218 to 0.835 with an average of 0.613. The primer pairs SSR42, SSRSSR111, SSR276 and SSR80 generated considerably greater number of allelic variants per primer and high discriminating ability in the pair-wise combinations of genotypes making them highly polymorphic and comparatively more informative primers for the purpose of molecular evaluation of entries. The results revealed ample diversity at the molecular level amongst the sixteen tomato entries under evaluation. The value of similarity coefficient between JT-3 and K.Amrit was found to be the maximum amongst the pair-wise combinations of all the entries. Analysis of divergence pattern allowed differentiation of all the genotypes. The dendrogram based on UPGMA divided the tomato entries into a mono-genotypic group (B), a multi-genotypic group (A), two di-genotypic group (C) and tri-genotypi (D). Clustering pattern of the entries based on similarity coefficient and principal co-ordinate analyses showed almost complete correspondence. The appreciable diversity on the basis of morphological, biochemical and molecular characterization was identified on the sixteen genotypes of tomato used in the present study. The study identified a panel of twenty two highly polymorphic SSR primer pairs which can be used to discriminate between different genotypes of tomato.