Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding
An evaluation of 115 accessions of pearl millet [Pennisetum
glaucum (L.) R. Br.] germplasm for green fodder yield as
well as quality traits in an augmented design over two
seasons revealed highly significant differences among the
accessions for days to heading. Plant height, tillers per
plant, stem thickness, protein content, calcium content,
oxalic acid content and green fodder yield per plot in
both the seasons. The genotypic and phenotypic
coefficients of variation were more or less similar for all
the characters. Broad sense habitability was moderate
(61% for stem thickness) to high (97% for calcium and
oxalic acid contents) confirming that genotypic variance
has contributed substantially to the total variance. The
association and path coefficient analysis revealed that
tillers' per plant, plant height and leaf to stem ratio were
the important characters and may be selected to increase
the fodder yield ability. Based on the results of the means
of the two seasons considering together the various traits,
the accession IP 5735 was found to be superior for
earliness, plant height, tiller per plant, leaves per plant,
leaf : stem ratio, oxalic acid content and green fodder
yield; IP-5741 for green fodder yield, earliness, plant height
and leaf: stem ratio; IP-15213 for green fodder yield,
earliness, plant height and tillers per plant; IP-17998 for
green fodder yield, tillers per plant, leaves per plant and
leaf: stem ratio; IP-14185 for green fodder yield, stem
thickness and low oxalic content; IP 14446 for green
fodder yield, plant height and low oxalic content. Therefore,
this accession should be utilized in further breeding
program for developing superior varieties.
Keywords: Pearl millet. coefficient of variation, heritability, correlation and path coefficient
Year: 2003
Volume: 63
Issue: 2
Article DOI: NA
Print ISSN: 0019-5200
Online ISSN: 0975-6906
K. C. Sharma, R. K. Sharma, D. L. Singhania and D. Singh info_circle
Download PDF