Assessment of the contribution of physiological traits to grain yield during crop improvement of finger millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn.)
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Date
40865
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Publisher
University of Agricultural Sciences GKVK, Bangalore
Abstract
Finger millet is an important food crop of southern peninsular
India. The productivity has increased over the years substantially
through crop improvement, and reached a plateau in the recent years.
Understanding the physiological traits that have contributed to yield
enhancement would enable to break the yield barrier. Hence, the
present study was undertaken to identify important physiological traits
that would be utilized in future breeding efforts.
In the present study, significant yield improvement (45 kg.ha-1
year-1) has been registered in varieties released over the years (1939-
2009). Such yield improvement was taken place in three phases viz.,
improvement of land races (1939-1976) through increased biomass,
development of Indaf varieties (1978 – 1996) through harvest index and
development of GPU and MR varieties (1996-2009) through further
increase in biomass. However, in the last few years yield has been
stagnated due to lower biomass even though HI was high. Therefore it
would be apt to consider biomass or its components as a selection
criterion in future-breeding programmes. The mean and total earhead
weight and threshing percent have contributed directly towards
improvement of HI while; the improvement of biomass was due to
accumulation of biomass at earhead emergence and post-anthesis period
and the TDM at earhead emergence (EHE) was directly influenced by
days to EHE, AGR and NAR and; positively associated with LAI and leaf
width. The photosynthetic rate, the light interception, leaf width and vein
number were also improved over the years.
This investigation is a detailed analysis of the physiological
parameters that contributed to yield improvement in finger millet. Leaf
width, leaf vein number, leaf area, and photosynthetic rate as registered
in variety, GPU-28 are important physiological traits that should be
considered to improve biomass and grain yield further.