Evaluation of finger millet landraces for various agronomic traits Jagadale T. S.*, Ahire D.D., Auti S. G.1 Department of Botany, New Arts, Commerce and Science College, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, India 1Department of Botany, HPT. Art's & RYK Science College, Nashik, Maharashtra, India *E-Mail: tusharjagadale95@gmail.com
Online published on 12 July, 2024. Abstract Finger millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn) is one of the important millets consumed by the people in Africa and Asia. The seeds of finger millet have rich nutrients providing energy and nutrients to the rural population. It has an excellent food value as its seeds contain 7 to 14 % protein which is rich in methionine, iron, and calcium. Despite all these merits, this crop has been neglected from the main stream of research on crop improvement. To overcome this situation, one of the means is to boost its breeding superior varieties. Present study was undertaken to determine the extent of agronomic variability in 45 landraces collected from north and western Maharashtra. Observations were recorded for characters like number of fingers, head weight (gm), height (cm), 1000 seed weight (gm), weight of single finger (spikelet) etc. Among all of the landraces, 4 landraces were observed with more than 9 fingers per head and head weights. The characters like head weight, number of fingers and weight of single spikelet showed more variations than the other agronomic characters. The superior landraces can be used for multiplication program for future best generations. Top Keywords Nutritional value, Germplasm evaluation, Morphological characters, Variability, Productivity. Top |