1Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Anbil Dharmalingam Agricultural College and Research Institute, Trichy-620 009, Tamil Nadu, India
2Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Anbil Dharmalingam Agricultural College and Research Institute, Trichy-620 009, Tamil Nadu, India
3Department of Plant Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
4Department of Plant Physiology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
*E-Mail: dr.manoagri1314@gmail.com
Online published on 30 July, 2020.
A laboratory experiment was conducted to screen 500 EMS induced mutants of Nagina22 using low molecular osmotic PEG-6000. The analysis of variance showed that all ten characters showed significant variation at 1% probability level. Nagina22 was screened under six moisture regimes as 0, -2, -4, -6, -8 and -10 bars of PEG-6000 and -6 bars was fixed as optimum concentration for mutant screening. Results of correlation revealed that relative seedling vigour showed positive significant correlation with all characters studied except root length stress index and relative root number. Based on PCA, emergence percentage, promptness index and seedling vigour was considered as selection criteria for selecting drought tolerant mutants under moisture stress. N22-PDT-17 and N22-PDT-64 recorded highest value for all the characters studied except number of roots than Nagina22. Hence, these two mutants were selected as better mutants with altered drought response and could be further validated under natural drought environment.
Drought, Nagina 22, Mutant, Polyethylene glycol
