Department of Plant Breeding, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Online published on 25 January, 2012.
Variation in the multilines of ‘PV 18’ variety and their components with respect of days to flowering, plant height, number of tillers per meter, ear length, number of spikelets, grains per ear, seed size, grain yield and reaction to yellow and brown rusts has been studied for two years. There was considerable variation for these traits among 212 components that were studied during 1973–74. Based on agronomic characters, yield and rust reaction, 84 of these were utilised to compose 12 multilines of different height and maturity groups. On an average there were 8 components in each multiline.
Some of the multilines outyielded the recurrent parent ‘PV 18’ whereas in other cases the yield of the multilines was on a par with yield of ‘PV 18’. Multilines were decidedly better in their rust resistance and only in case of PVML 5 (brown rust) and PVML 11 and 13 (yellow rust) the reaction was more than 5S as against many of components where rust reaction was higher than this limit. PV 18 had an attack of 40S and 60S of yellow and brown rust respectively. The prospects of multilines have been discussed in the light of the results obtained.
