Mutagenic effect of hydroxyl amine and sodium azide on the performance of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

Abstract

Tomato, an important vegetable crop due to its utility as raw, cooked and processed form of food, requires improved cultivar with high nutrition and yield to meet out global demand in changing agro-climatic conditions. The mutagenesis is one of the most important techniques to create genetic variability and identification of economically important traits towards the crop improvement. Therefore, the mutagenic effect of various concentrations of hydroxyl amine and sodium azide were studied on tomato var. PKM 1 for the qualitative and quantitative traits of economic importance. The seeds of tomato were obtained from Ryoth’s Depot Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh, India and treated with the different concentrations of sodium azide (SA) and hydroxyl amine (HA) 2 mM, 3 mM, 4 mM, 5 mM and 0.1, 0.15%, 0.2, 0.25%, respectively) for four hours. Study on germination per cent, seedling height, root length and pollen viability was carried out in lab and for growth parameters. M1 generation was grown in the field. The mutagens hydroxyl amine (0.1%) and sodium azide (2 Mm), showed least reduction in parameters and with increase the concentration of both chemicals, decline was noted. Highly significant differences were observed in the treatments with respect to the studied traits (seed germination, seedling survival, seedling height, root length, pollen viability, leaves per seedling and height at maturity, branches per plant and fruits per plant. The present study concluded that mutagens had detrimental effects along with creating variability. Hence, hydroxyl amine (0.1%) and sodium azide (2 Mm) could be utilized to induce variability for the improvement of tomato.