Studies on quantitative characters for gamma rays treatment in urd bean (Vigna mungo L.) Hepper

Mutation breeding is relatively a quicker method for improvement of crop plants. Induced mutation in plant improvement has been proven to be one of the alternative ways to generate new sources of genetic variation in urdbean. It has been observed that induced mutations can increase yield as well as other quantitative traits in plants. For this aspect, the present study was analyzed using physical mutagen with ADT 3 and CO 6 varieties of urdbean. The trial was taken up during January 2016 replicated twice in RBD. The various dose/concentration of gamma rays (200, 300 and 400 kR) were treated to urdbean seed materials. LD50 dose for gamma rays on ADT 3 and CO 6 was 309.75 Gy and 301.06 Gy respectively to study their effect on various characters like plant height, number of branches per plant, days to fifty percent flowering, number of cluster per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, hundred seed weight and yield per plant. In M1 generation, all the characters were considerably reduced when compared to control. The results obtained in the present study clearly indicated that different doses of gamma rays can be effectively utilized to create variability for various quantitative traits of the crop. (author)