The Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding

In an Induced mutation study in blackgram digitonin was applied as a pretreatment chemical just before the treatment with the mutagen ethyl methanesulphonate (EMS) to enhance the mutagenic effect of EMS through greater uptake of the mutagen into the cells. The M₂ populations were screened for macro- and micro-mutations. The frequency and spectrum of total macro-mutations were substantially increased by digitonin-EMS treatment compared to EMS treatment alone. There was also Increue in micro-mutations by digitonin pretreatment for almost all the quantitative characters except seeds per pod and single-plant yield.