Morpho-physiological and reproductive characters and their relationships with seed yield of mungbean mutants

Experiment was conducted under sub-tropical condition to investigate the variations in some morphological features, growth, reproductive characters and its impact on seed yield using correlation coefficient in 15 promising mungbean mutants and cultivars. Correlation study revealed that among the traits investigated, leaf area was the most important source that determined total dry mass (TDM) yield, and reproductive characters like number of racemes, flowers and pods/plant were the most important sinks that determined seed yield. Contrarily, reproductive efficiency (RE, % pod set to opened flowers) did not show significant relationship with pod number, pod size and seed yield, indicating that selection of high yield based on RE may be misleading. Generally, high yielding genotypes had capacity to produce higher branches, total dry mass production, leaf area, crop growth rate and number of flowers per plant than the low yielding ones. This information may be used in future plant breeding programme.