Induced Polygenic Mutations in Ragi

An experiment to study induced polygenic mutations was undertaken in two varieties of ragi, viz., Puma and Hamsa after treating the seeds with. acqueous solutions of 0.2 and 0.3% ethyl methane sulphonate. In M₁ generation, the variance was increased indicating the effectiveness of mutagen in inducing polygenic mutations.

In the M₂ generation, it was noticed that for characters which were subjected to previous selection such as plant height and number of fingers per plant the induced mutations follow the opposite trend but in characters which were not subjected to previous selections like number of tillers per plant the induced mutations are random but with an increase in the variance.