Genetic studies on morpho-phenological traits in lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus) wide crosses.

Abstract

Genetic studies were undertaken in nine intersubspecific and interspecific crosses of lentil to understand the inheritance pattern of morphological characters viz., growth habit, flower colour, cotyledon colour and pod dehiscence. The F1 and F2 generations of these wide crosses were assessed and suggested monogenic inheritance of these traits. The segregation pattern of these qualitative traits will also help in the identification of true to type F1 plants from the interspecific crosses. All nine intersubspecific and interspecific crosses exhibited a wide variability for days to flowering, maturity and duration from flowering to maturity. The results indicated that these characters are governed by independent sets of genes during the growth and development phases. Heritability of both characters has been reported to be high in all wide crosses. In India, cultivated lentil species have an intrinsically narrow genetic base and that situation limits our plant breeder’s progress today (Earskine et al. 1998). To attain further breakthrough in increasing yield and improving stability in future crop cultivars, new sources of variation need to be incorporated into the cultivated gene pool. Therefore, some efforts for broadening the genetic base of lentil cultivars using wild Lens taxa have been initiated by the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Pusa, New Delhi, India (Singh et al. 2013), and also in some other research organizations (Ahmad et al. 1995; Fratini and Ruiz 2006; Gupta and Sharma 2007). Incorporation of different traits of interest in the background of cultivated varieties has helped in the flow of useful genes with increased allelic frequency from wild Lens taxa in the common gene pool of cultivated varieties (Ladizinsky et al. 1988).