| Abstrakt: |
Finger millet is an important cereal owing to its nutritive qualities. It is highly self-pollinated, allotetraploid crop with extremely small-sized flower makes hybridization a bottleneck to exploit the variability. Partial male sterile and virescence lines are of greater importance in finger millet breeding since, it facilitates easy identification of true F1 s in seedling stage with the help of virescence maker. Selection of appropriate parents is key to success of hybridization and crop improvement. In this back drop the present study was conducted during kharif, 2021 and kharif, 2022 utilizing twenty-three finger millet lines comprising 11 partial male sterile, six partial male sterile with virescence marker and six virescent lines to unravel the genetic variability parameters. Analysis of variance indicated the selection of experimental material was appropriate. High phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) was observed for number of productive tillers, grain yield per plant, ear head weight and threshing percentage in both seasons. The line 20-12 was earliest flowering, 3-3-1 had long finger length and highest productive tillers and the virescent line vir early had highest yield per plant. Days to fifty per cent flowering showed low PCV and GCV in both the seasons. High heritability and high GAM were observed for traits like peduncle length, ear length, finger length, finger width, finger number, productive tillers, test weight, grain yield per plant and ear head weight in kharif, 2021 and traits viz., finger number, grain yield per plant and threshing percentage in kharif, 2022. These results suggest that the trait expression is less influenced by the environment and selection would be effective. Partial male sterile and virescence lines have substantial amount of variability and most of the traits under study exhibit high heritability and genetic advance and could be exploited in crop improvement program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
