Division of Genetics, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi 110 012.
1Present address: Department of Plant Breeding, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar 124 004.
Dry, healthy and uniform seeds of a macrosperma lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) cv., ‘Precoz Selection’ were treated with three doses (0.005, 0.01 and 0.02%) each of ethylene imine (EI) and N-nitroso-N-ethyl urea (NEU) and gamma rays (5, 10 and 20 kR). In M1, different groups of mutagenic damage were identified in each treatment viz., low seedling damage and low sterility (LL), high seedling damage and low sterility (HL), low seedling damage and high sterility (LH), and high seedling damage and high sterility (HH). Effective selection was attempted in M2 based on desired shift in character mean and higher CV than the highest observed in the control, followed by identification of M3 families with higher mean than the highest in the control. Among the mutagens tested, NEU induced the highest frequencies of mutated and promising progenies with multiple characters in both the M2 and M3, followed by EI and gamma rays, and different groups of mutagenic damage were observed to follow the pattern: HH>HL>LH >LL in the M2 and HH >LL in the M3.
Lentil, induced mutations, multiple characters, polygenic variability
