Vegetos

Abstract

Seeds each of two lentil cultivars, LH90-54 (macrosperma) and LH89-48 (microsperma) were treated with three doses of gamma rays (5, 10 and 15 kR). In both the cultivars, all the M₁ plants with sufficient seed from each treatment and control were taken to raise independent M₂ plant progenies. Five normal looking competitive plants from each M₂ progeny were taken randomly to record observations on eight quantitative traits of economic importance, viz., plant height (cm), pod-initiation height (cm), number of fruiting branches/plant, number of fruiting pods/plant, 100-seed weight (g), seed yield/plant (g), biomass/plant (g) and harvest index (%). Wider range and mean in both positive and negative directions along with a general positive shift in mean for various polygenic traits than control were observed in different treatments in M₂ generation. The variance, GCV and PCV for different polygenic traits increased tremendously over control values in all the treatments of both the cvs. Higher estimates of heritability and genetic advance in the M₂ populations indicated tremendous scope for the improvement of seed yield and its component traits following selection in reduced volume of mutagenized material.