Vol. 12, Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
Raj Kumar Goswami, Rumjhum Phukan, Dikshita Gogoi, PK Barua, Priyabrata Sen and Sharmila Dutta Deka

Abstract:
Indian mustard is one of the most important oilseed crops in the world. In India, it the second most popular oilseed crop after groundnut. Mustard is a species with genetic potential for high economic yield. Despite these positive attributes, mustard is not favoured in Assam because of its longer duration. In Assam, farmers prefer short duration oilseed varieties which are of medium to short height as the winter season is of shorter duration. It has been found that reduced foot length leads to shorter duration along with higher yield. With this idea, crosses were made between certain selected varieties to combine the high yielding capacity and shorter height to develop varieties for the short winter season of Assam. The study was conducted with the objective of assessing the genetic variation, inheritance of foot length and Correlation of foot length with yield and other yield attributes. Seventeen genotypes were grown in the Rabi 2015-16 consisting of 11 varieties and 6 F₂ lines. Crosses were made between selected parents to produce F₁ progeny and backcrosses were made to selected F₂ lines to produce backcross progeny which were subsequently grown in Rabi 2016-17. Analysis of variance revealed presence of significant amount of variation among the genotypes. In the first year all the characters exhibited high to moderate heritability for all the characters except maximum root length. In the second year all characters showed moderate to low heritability. D² analysis grouped 17 genotypes of the first year into 6 clusters and 15 genotypes of the second year into 4 clusters. Correlation analysis for the first year revealed that there is a significant negative correlation between foot length and all the characters except plant height, days to maturity and days to 50% flowering. Seed weight per plant was significantly correlated to all the characters except plant height, days to maturity and days to 50% flowering. In the second year, foot length was correlated only to number of primary branches per plant and stem thickness. Seed weight per plant was significantly correlated to all characters except days to 50% flowering, foot length, number of secondary branches, root length, biological yield per plant and harvest index. Analysis of variance for NCD III for two crosses namely TM 106 x TM 2 and DRMR 150-35 x TM 2 for the character foot length revealed significant difference among the parents in the first cross but not for the second cross. Narrow sense heritability for foot length was found to be 61% for the first cross and 35% for the second cross.