Genetic and Seed Quality Evaluation of Barnyard Millet (Echinochloa frumentacea (Roxb.) Link) Germplasm
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Date
2015-07
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College of Forestry, Ranichauri Campus, V.C.S.G. Uttarakhand University of Horticulture and Forestry
Abstract
The present investigation was conducted during Kharif, 2014 at Research Block, Department of Crop Improvement and Seed Testing at Department of Seed Science and Technology, V. C. S. G. Uttarakhand University of Horticulture and Forestry, College of Forestry, Ranichauri Campus with 35 diverse genotypes of barnyard millet including three checks viz., VL-172, VL-207 and PRJ-1. Observations recorded for field parameters were days to 50 per cent flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of productive tillers per plant, number of leaves on main tiller, flag leaf area, peduncle length, ear length, finger length, number of fingers per ear, biological yield per plant, harvest index, 1000 seed weight and grain yield per plant while seed quality parameters were recorded for standard germination, root length, shoot length , seedling length, seedling fresh weight, seedling dry weight, relative growth index, vigour index-I, vigour index-II, relative growth index and rate of germination. The data was utilized for estimation of mean, range, coefficients of variation, heritability and genetic advance, correlation coefficients, path coefficient and genetic divergence.
The genotype exhibiting high mean performance for grain yield along with high performance for some other yield components were PRJ-1, RAU-11, VL-239, EC-134192 and VL-230. The genotypes PRJ-1 was highest for standard germination per centage, root length, shoot length, seedling length, seedling fresh weight, seedling dry weight, vigour index-I and vigour index-II while the genotype IEC-546 was found highest for rate of germination. Phenotypic and genotypic variances were highest for plant height. Moderate values of phenotypic coefficients of variation were noticed for flag leaf area, number of fingers per ear, 1000 seed weight, biological yield per plant and peduncle length while low values of genotypic coefficients of variation for all the traits was observed. High heritability along with high genetic advance in per cent of mean was observed only for finger length while moderate estimates of heritability coupled with high genetic advance in per cent of mean were recorded for flag leaf area and biological yield per plant. Biological yield per plant, number of fingers per ear, number of leaves on main tiller and 1000 seed weight exerted a very strong positive association towards grain yield per plant at phenotypic and genotypic level. Maximum positive direct effect on grain yield per plant was imposed by biological yield per plant and harvest index at genotypic and phenotypic level. However, high negative direct effect at genotypic level was noted for flag leaf area and number of fingers per ear.
In genetic divergence, all thirty-five genotypes by using Mahalanobis D² stastistic was grouped into 6 clusters irrespective of geographical diversity, indicating no parallelism between geographic and genetic diversity. The cluster pairs exhibiting very high inter-cluster distances were cluster IV and VI, cluster IV and V, cluster II and IV, cluster III and VI, cluster I and IV and cluster III and IV. Considering cluster mean and genetic distance the crossing between genotypes of clusters IV with genotypes of cluster VI and those genotypes of cluster V would be fruitful for obtaining transgrassive segregants for developing high yielding and better quality barnyard millet varieties.
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