Estimation of Heritability, Genetic Advance and Correlation for Quantitative Traits in M3-Generation Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) under Induced EMS Mutagenesis

Abstract— An experiment was carried out with two varieties of chickpea-IC265291 (V1) and IC265298 (V2) which were obtained from NBPGR, New Delhi to study the Heritability, correlation and Genetic advance as percent of the mean for 11 quantitative characters. Healthy & Uniform seeds of two varieties of chickpea were treated with different concentrations of chemical mutagen EMS (Ethyl Methyl Sulfonate) viz:0.1%, 0.2%, 0.3%, 0.4%, 0.5% and 0.6%.The seeds were grown in petri plates and seed survival rate and seedling characters were studied. The EMS-treated seeds along with the control (untreated) seeds were sown in the field at CPMB (Centre for Plant Molecular Biology), Osmania University, Hyderabad. The result of the study, revealed that all the characters under study were shown significant phenotypic and genotypic correlations with seed weight except days to flower initiation, days to 50% flowering and days to pod maturity. In Chickpea, Phenotypic Coefficient of Variation (PCV) for all the traits is found to be higher than Genotypic Coefficient of Variation (GCV).For the traits Number of branches per plant, Number of pods per plant, Pod weight per plant, Number of seeds per plant and 100 seed weight-Heritability(h2) and Genetic Advance(GA) are found to be higher. These are the most important traits that can be utilised for the improvement of seed yield in chickpea.