AbstractLegumes play a pivotal role in combating the chronic hunger and malnutrition in the developing nations and are also ideal crops to achieve global food and nutrition security. In the era of climate change, erratic rainfalls, depleting arable land and water resource, feeding the rapidly growing population is a challenging task. Among breeding programs for crop improvement, induced mutagenesis has proven to be the viable, effective, robust and coherent tool to facilitate the process of creating varieties with improved yield. Like most other pulses, cowpea is a self pollinated, nutritious, versatile and widely adapted grain legume, but harbour a little accessible genetic variability. Lack of sufficient genetic variability and small size of flowers, traditional plant breeding methods are not enough to meet the demands of improvement of cowpea. Hence, induced mutagenesis was employed to induce significant genetic variability across a range of agro-economical traits in two cowpea varieties Gomati VU-89 and Pusa-578 from M1 to M4 generations. The success of induced mutagenesis largely depends on the selection of appropriate mutagen, its dose, effectiveness and efficiency. Hence present study was conduct to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of single and combined doses of sodium azide and gamma rays to set an appropriate protocol for induced mutagenesis experimentation in cowpea.
Mutagenic Effectiveness and Efficiency of EMS and Sodium Azide in Mungbean [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek]
