Estimation of Field Environment Variability for Germination and Seedling Traits in Madhuca indica Gmel

Objective: The study was conducted to estimate the pattern of field environment genetic variation for twenty genotypes of Madhuca indica Gmel distributed over different sites/locations of district Allahabad and adjoining areas of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Study Design: Study under Randomised Block Design (RBD).

Place and Duration of Study: The study was carried out in field environment in the nursery of the School of Forestry and Environment, Allahabad Agricultural Institute, Deemed-University, Allahabad, situated at 25.28ºN latitude and 81.55ºE longitude, located at an altitude of 98m amsl, during July, 2010.

Materials and Methods: Candidate plus trees of Madhuca indica were marked using the following criteria; Height (m), Diameter at breast height (m), Seed length (cm), Seed diameter (cm), free from disease and insect-pests and straight, non-forked cylindrical bole. Following the above criteria, fresh and fully ripened open pollinated seeds of 20 plus trees were collected from different geographical locations in district Allahabad and adjoining areas in Uttar Pradesh India, during July 2010. Germination tests were conducted under field (open) environment between 30-35ºC. Three replications of 40 seeds each were used for the test. 120 seeds of each plus tree were simultaneously sown under field environment in nursery in polythene bags, in three replicates used RBD design. The germination count was recorded on every alternate day for 30 days. Observations on morphological traits were taken after one growing season. The recorded observations were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) to understand the significance of differences among 20 plus tree progenies. Various genetic parameters like genotypic coefficient of variance (GCV), phenotypic coefficient of variance (PCV), broad sense heritability, estimated genetic advance and genetic gain were determined by previously described methods.

Results: The results revealed, higher values for phenotype coefficient of variation as compared to genotypic coefficient of variation in corresponding germination and seedling growth characters, indicating that the characters are greatly influenced by the field environment. The heritability and expected genetic gain were also observed to be high to moderate for these characters. There is wide scope for early screening of the genotypes because of the positive and significant correlation at 5% level of significance among germination and seedling growth characters with each other except for few characters times with each other such as internodal length with number of leaves per seedling, number of leaves with dry weight of shoot, fresh weight of root and total biomass of seedling.

Conclusion: Respectively as such genotypes S20, S9, S12 and S19 showed better performance as compared to other genotypes and are recommended for further genetic improvement programme in this species