Genetics of early growth vigour in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.)

Abstract

Genetics of early growth vigour was studied in two crosses of lentil (Lens culinaris ssp. culinaris) involving ILL6002 and ILL7663 as rapid early growth vigour parents and DPL15 as slow early growth vigour parent. The early growth vigour was measured on the basis of seedling length and data was recorded on 114 and 834 individual F2 plants derived from DPL15 × ILL6002 and DPL15 × ILL7663 crosses, respectively. Frequency distribution of F2 plants appeared to be normal for seedling length, but it was skewed towards slow early growth vigour. Hence, analysis of early growth vigour as a qualitative trait in F2 and F3 revealed that slow early growth vigour was dominant over rapid early growth vigour and a single recessive gene controlled the rapid early growth vigour in lentil. However, occurrence of transgressive segregants for seedling length indicated that some minor genes also interacted with one major gene for early growth vigour. Therefore, QTL analysis for early growth vigour can help to identify major and minor gene(s), for making genetic improvement in lentil by the use of marker assisted selection. Lentil is an important cool season food legume crop of rainfed agriculture and it is one of important pulse crops for diversifying cereal-based cropping systems worldwide. Presently, it occupies 3.74 million ha area producing 3.40 million tons grains in the world with an average yield of 915 kg/ha (Erskine et al. 2011). The major geographical regions of lentil production are South Asia and China (44.3%), northern great plains in North America (41%), west Asia and north Africa (6.7%), sub-Saharan Africa (3.5%) and Australia (2.5%) (FAOSTAT 2010). Among countries, India accounts for the largest global area under lentil with 1.48 million ha area and 1.01 million ton production (AICRP 2010–2011). The present productivity of lentil in India is very low as it is mostly grown as post-rainy season crop under receding soil moisture conditions during the winter