Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Manisha Kashyap and Medha Saha

Abstract:
Gladiolus is an important cut flower crop which possesses a great potential for export market to European countries especially during winter. The basic chromosome number of gladiolus is X=15 (Shukla et al. 2018) Gladiolus is an important flower crop and is very popular as cut flower both in the domestic and international market. The demand of gladiolus is increasing therefore; it needs attention towards genetic improvement. These have mostly been evolved through conventional breeding but a few through mutation breeding (Sathyanarayan et al. 2022). Mutations are induced in different crops to create variability for further improvement. In vegetatively propagated plants, mutation breeding offers great potentialities as the mutated part can be conveniently perpetuated by vegetative means resulting in the development of new forms. Gladiolus is highly heterozygous in its genetic constitution which makes it promising test material for inducing physical mutagenesis (Sahariya et al., 2017). Corms of different gladiolus variety were treated with different doses of gamma rays, EMS and DES were taken under study. Higher doses of all mutagens adversely affected growth and flowering parameters of gladiolus.