https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB <p>The society was founded 60 years ago and has been keeping itself abreast with the latest research in the area of Genetics and Plant Breeding by encouraging active integration among its members through topical seminar/symposia to bring about the awareness among its members and the public at large. The Indian Journal of Genetics and Plant Breeding is a periodical for the publication of records of original research in all branches of genetics, plant breeding and cytology, including human genetics, molecular biology and biotechnology, and other cognate sciences of sufficient importance and of such a character as to be of primary interest to the geneticist and plant breeders.</p> Indian Society of Genetics & Plant Breeding en-US INDIAN JOURNAL OF GENETICS AND PLANT BREEDING 0019-5200 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3303 Pulse crops are overly sensitive to salinity stress as compared to cereals and other crops. The growth, development and yield of the pulses are severely affected by high concentration of salts accumulated in the soil due to inadequate drainage or other reasons. However, some of the pulse species have developed adaptive mechanism to overcome the salinity stress and hence, thorough screening of the germplasm through hydroponics or field testing is essential to identify the potential genotypes. Several costeffective techniques of mitigating the salt stress including the physical, chemical and biological approaches have been analyzed and discussed. The mechanism of salinity stress and plant's response towards changes in morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular features have been delineated in detail. Effective breeding approaches and progress in development of salt tolerant pulse crops have been highlighted. However, current leads in understanding the mechanism of salt stress and the genotypes developed may not be sufficient to enhance the productivity and availability of the pulse crops. The kind of efforts needed to improve pulse crops are rare and hence, require special attention. Therefore, integration of the traditional and modern breeding approaches including 'omics' technologies and biological agents are needed to address the issue of salt stress effectively. The development of stress tolerant pulse crops through genetic engineering has also shown promise. High-quality genotypic and phenotypic data including high throughput imaging approaches might lead to proper understanding of the mechanism of salt tolerance which in turn would help designing effective breeding programme for the development of pulse crops tolerant to salinity stress. Rekha Joshi Naleeni Ramawat Jyoti Jha Kumar Durgesh Madanpal Singh Akshay Talukdar S. M. S. Tomar Dharmendra Singh ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 159 185 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3304 Most of the modern-day cultivars of spring wheat cultivated in the Indian sub-continent are susceptible to hightemperature stress during reproductive stages, and breeding for heat-tolerant genotypes is the plausible solution to mitigate effects of global warming on wheat productivity. Triticum durum – Aegilops speltoides backcross introgression lines were used for transferring seven heat tolerance QTLs to three different hexaploid backgrounds using marker assisted selection. A total of 164 BC2F3 progenies with different combinations of QTLs were generated and 40 progenies were evaluated in replicated trials across two years under normal (OE) and heat stress environments (HSE). Phenotypic evaluation and heat tolerance index (HTI) analysis over two environments showed that grain filling duration, spikelets/spike, tiller number, thousand grain weight, and yield showed were enhanced due to the introgression of heat stress tolerance QTLs. Progenies pauHTIL_10, 11, 12, 33, and 34 have shown higher yield than tested cultivars under OE with pauHTIL_10, 11, and 12 showed yields higher than 2.0 kgs/plot under OE and pauHTIL_14 showed yield of 1.6kg/plot under HSE. The progenies developed during this study can further be used for developing heat-tolerant wheat varieties. Guriqbal Singh Dhillon Niranjan Das Satinder Kaur Puja Srivastava Navtej Singh Bains Parveen Chhuneja ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 186 198 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3305 In the context of the growing human population and climatic change, the current pace of wheat improvement is slow to meet future demand. This downturn partly owes to long generation time which demands technologies such as speed breeding (SB) that can accelerate plant growth and generation turnover. In field crops like wheat, SB is particularly contextual, because annual crop cycle is limited to one to two generations per year. To enable rapid generation advancement, SB uses extended photoperiod with supplementary lighting and temperature control to accelerate the development rate. However, if a part of these conditions is naturally available, such as temperature and humidity, SB can be launched with photoperiod manipulations alone. To test this hypothesis, we have conducted a study involving ten wheat cultivars, of which six were of Triticum aestivum and two each were of T. durum and T. dicoccum. The cultivars were subjected to 22 hours of extended light using red LED lamps and 2 hours of dark in a polyhouse, under natural temperature range of 17-22°C and relative humidity of 75-80%. In all the cultivars, except HD 2967, plants reached heading in 36-42 days and physiological maturity in 67-73 days. In contrast, the same cultivars took 53-72 days for heading and 105-132 days for physiological maturity under field conditions. With SB, we could obtain five generations per year as against two generations under field conditions. Our results suggest that the customized SB has the potential for accelerated breeding as well as for integration with modern wheat improvement technologies. V. K. Vikas M. Sivasamy P. Jayaprakash K. K. Vinod M. Geetha R. Nisha P. Shajitha John Peter ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 199 207 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3306 Understanding the physiological traits enhancing grain yield is important for wheat breeding under rainfed conditions. Nineteen durum wheat genotypes differing in origin were evaluated for their grain yield and agro-physiological characteristics under rainfed conditions for two consecutive cropping seasons,2017-18 and 2018-19. The main effects due to year, genotype and their interactions were significant for most of the investigated traits. The genotype by trait biplots (known as GT biplot) indicated that the relationships among the studied traits were not consistent over the years but they facilitated visual genotype comparison and selection at each year. The 1000-kernel weight (TKW) and normalized difference vegetative index (NDVI) consistently associated with grain yield suggesting the importance of these traits to be used as selection criteria for enhancing grain yield under rainfed conditions. Based on the cluster heat map, the genotypes classified into five groups with different levels of combined grain yield and physiological and agronomic attributes. The traits heading date, NDVI, Fv/Fm, TKW and SPAD-reading had contributed to grain yield. The study also identified potential lines with high yield and drought tolerance for subsequent varietal development for water limited areas. Firouz Shirvani Reza Mohammadi Mashaallah Daneshvar Ahmad Ismail ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 208 220 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3307 Reproductive stage drought stress (RSDS) tolerance in rice with higher productivity is very important in the context of climate change. With increasingly fluctuating rainfall distribution, maintaining higher productivity in the niche areas of rice production such as northern-western India is a challenge. Pusa 44 has been one of the most popular high yielding cultivars of northern-western India especially in the states of Punjab and Haryana. A medium duration rice variety with long slender grains, Pusa 44 is highly sensitive to drought and can lose up to 65% yield when exposed to the unexpected RSDS. To address this challenge, markerassisted backcross breeding was adopted to introgress two QTLs governing yield under RSDS namely, qDTY2.1 and qDTY3.1 from the donors, IR81896-B-B-195 and IR81896-BB- 142 possessing both the QTLs. Through marker assisted foreground and phenotypic selection several backcross derived inbred lines (BILs; BC3F4) were developed, out of which Pusa 1823-12-31-12-12 (qDTY3.1), Pusa 1823-12-62 (qDTY2.1+qDTY3.1), Pusa 1823-12-82 (qDTY2.1+qDTY3.1), Pusa 1823-12-55 (qDTY2.1+qDTY3.1), and Pusa 1969-13-21- 10-24 (qDTY2.1) were found to significantly out-yield Pusa 44 to the tune of 2.0 to 2.5 times under RSDS. Lines possessing qDTY2.1 were found relatively less stable for drought response, than those possessing both the QTLs. These improved BILs are important genetic resource for further genetic studies as well as donors for improving rice yields under RSDS. Kyaw Swar Oo Gaurav Dhawan Pankaj Vijay Prakash S. Gopala Krishnan Prolay Kumar Bhowmick Madan Pal M. Nagarajan Ranjith Kumar Ellur Haritha Bollinedi K. K. Vinod A. K. Singh ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 221 235 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3308 A set of sixty landraces along with checks were taken from core group of rice germplasm was studied stability of the genotypes under water stress condition following three different statistical approaches. The three analytical measures of stability namely, Eberhart and Russel model, Yield Index and Drought Susceptibility Index identified only four genotypes viz., Jhitpiti, Angurguchcha, E-1702 and Elayachi (PMBB) with stable mean performance in irrigated, rainfed and terminal stage drought (TSD) condition over two years. Drought intensity index showed high degree of stress in rainfed and TSD conditions. Hence, these four genotypes are said to be stable genotypes under all the three conditions. The four promising genotypes with high genetic stability and stable yield under diverse environments may prove useful in rice breeding programs for enhancing the yield under water stress conditions. Suman Rawte Ritu R. Saxena S. B. Verulkar ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 236 244 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3309 Phytic acid (PA), an anti-nutritional factor in maize (Zea mays L.) grains form various salts by chelating essential vital mineral elements namely, Fe3+, Zn2+, Mg2+, etc. affecting their bioavailability. Low phytic acid (LPA) maize can play a vital role as an important food and feed crop to diversify the existing food basket to address micronutrient malnutrition. Globally efforts to identify LPA maize genotypes in the existing germplasm are limited. Keeping this in view, the present experiment was designed using the diverse set of maize germplasm including landraces, composites, inbred lines and hybrids of field corn and also some genotypes of quality protein maize and sweet corn to explore the extent of variability for PA in the existing germplasm and to identify the LPA maize genotypes. The mean PA content across 104 genotypes excluding LPA mutants varied from 1.7 mg/g (CML150) to 4.5 mg/g (VMH45) whereas inorganic phosphate (Pi) varied from 0.07 mg/g (LM16) to 0.95 mg/g (PMH9). The correlation coefficient between PA and Pi across genotypes was negative but moderate (-0.35) (P = 0.00024). The present study has identified two inbred lines namely, CML150 (1.7 mg/g) and CML176 (1.8 mg/g) which do not differ significantly with either of the two LPA mutants namely, LPA1 (1.3 mg/g) and LPA2 (1.7 mg/g). The study further indicated that PA content is generally low in white kernel colour germplasm as compared to other kernel colours. The identified genotypes could be potential donor for developing LPA maize genotypes and also their utilization in the breeding for development of LPA maize cultivars. K. R. Yathish S. S. Gangoliya T. Ghoshal A. Singh R. K. Phagna A. K. Das S. Neelam S. B. Singh A. Kumar S. Rakshit R. N. Gadag F. Hossain C. G. Karjagi ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 245 254 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3310 Forty maize inbred lines were assessed at seedling, vegetative and flowering plant growth stages for nitrogen use efficiency under nitrogen sufficient and deficient soil conditions. Significant variations were observed in the morpho-physiological and agronomical traits. Inbred lines were classified into two major clusters based on the response of morphological and physiological traits to nitrogen limiting conditions. Cluster 1(C1) I included DMI 4, DMI 5, DMI 22, DMI 27 and DMI 56 inbred lines-derived from the drought or thermal tolerant parents HKI335 and LM17 with less reduction in growth-related parameters as compared to cluster CII inbred lines, which were derived from sensitive genotypes MGUD22 and HKI1015wg8. The enzymatic activities of nitrate reductase (NR) and glutamine synthetase (GS) were observed to be more critical for screening in the early growth stage. The identified inbred lines have the potential for developing maize hybrids with improved nitrogen use efficiency. Prabha Singh R. S. Tomar Krishan Kumar Bhupender Kumar Sujay Rakshit Ishwar Singh ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 255 265 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3311 Drought stress poses a global threat for sustainable growth and productivity of major legumes, including chickpea. There was severe reduction in biomass of the chickpea plants subjected to drought and the effect on leaves was most apparent. However, there was not much difference in the root volume(s) suggesting a drought tolerance mechanism other than the root traits in Pusa 362, a drought tolerant genotype as compared to SBD377, a drought sensitive genotype. The proline accumulation was significantly higher in Pusa 362 as compared to SBD377. Recently miRNAs (21-24 nt in length, endogenous, noncoding RNAs) have emerged as major regulatory molecules which have been shown to regulate gene expression during drought stress conditions. Among the 16 validated miRNAs, expression of miR167, miR168 and miR171 showed significant upregulation (>3-fold) in root tissue of drought tolerant genotype. These miRNAs targets auxin response factors, WD-repeat and scarecrow-like transcription factors, respectively which are known to play important role in drought stress in plants suggesting direct role of these miRNAs during drought tolerance in chickpea. miR390 and miR2118 were up-regulated in shoot samples in Pusa 362. Among the novel miRNAs, nov_miR8 in root and nov_miR2 in shoot tissue showed maximum expression in Pusa 362. Nov_miR2 targets GMP synthase and nov_miR8 targets gene encoding laccase. GMP synthase are involved in synthesis of purine nucleotides which among other functions play key role as secondary messenger in signal pathways activated during stress conditions. These drought-responsive miRNAs are likely to provide novel insights into post transcriptional gene regulation under drought stress conditions in chickpea at molecular level. Lalbahadur Singh Deshika Kohli Kishor Gaikwad Rekha Kansal Anil Dahuja Vijay Paul Chellapilla Bharadwaj Pradeep Kumar Jain ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 266 276 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3312 Nodulation in peanut is an important source of nitrogen and is highly sensitive to drought stress and genotype-byenvironmental interactions (GEI) play an important role in nodulation during such stresses. But very little information is available on the extent of variation in nodulation due to environment and GEI under drought stress conditions. To achieve this objective, field experiment was conducted under mid-season water stress with14 peanut genotypes using multivariate stability models such as Additive Main Effect and Multiplicative Interaction (AMMI) and GGE models. AMMI and GGE analysis identified significant environmental effect followed by genotype, and GE interactions for all nodule related traits, except for fresh nodule weight at 60 and 80 days after sowing. Present study provides statistical evidence that nodulation characters are affected by environmental factors. Study also identified PBS-14060 as stable genotype with high nodulation under water stress conditions and was recommended for inclusion in breeding programs. Chuni Lal B. C. Ajay Kajal V. Rupapara ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 277 288 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3313 The inheritance of pod yield and related horticultural traits of garden pea using 12 generations was followed in three inter-varietal crosses. The non-fixable gene effects are higher than the fixable as a consequence of higher magnitude of epistatic interactions. Duplicate type of epistasis for different traits in three crosses in one or the other environment suggested to proceed with mild selection intensity in the early generations followed by intense in the later. The failure of the trigenic model for shelling (%), pods/ plant, pod yield/ plant, pod length and seeds/ pod in all or in one of the crosses and environments revealed the complexity in the inheritance of these characters suggesting either presence of minor or modifier genes, and linkage rather than higher order interactions is responsible. The non-additive gene effects along with presence of non-allelic interactions for majority of the traits in respective crosses directed to adopt population improvement methods to break undesirable linkages through recombination or to defer selection in later generations following bulk pedigree or SSD methods with one or two inter-matings like recurrent selection. Kumari Shiwani Akhilesh Sharma ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 289 299 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3314 Groundnut genotypes consisting of 83 Spanish and 76 Virginia germplasm accessions were evaluated under treatments having with and without phosphorus (P) application for two consecutive years and analysed using GGE-biplot analysis. The first two principal components (PC1 and PC2) of GGE-biplot explained 46.8% and 31.6% of variation respectively in Spanish and 59.1% and 27.3% of variation respectively in the Virginia group. Genotypes having PC1 scores >0 are adaptable and high yielding whereas those with PC1 scores less than 0 are non-adaptable and low yielding. Similarly, genotypes with PC2 scores near zero are stable and those with absolute larger PC2 scores are unstable. Treatment with phosphorus (MP) application was more discriminative while the treatment without P application was more representative and genotype NRCG- 12296 (43) in Spanish and genotypes NRCG-11760 (9) and NRCG-14325 (27) in Virginia were ideal with high yield and stability across both with and without phosphorus (P) applications. B. C. Ajay S. K. Bera A. L. Singh Narendra Kumar M. C. Dagla K. Gangadhar H. N. Meena A. D. Makwana ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 300 306 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3315 For reliable gene expression results, normalization of realtime PCR data is required against a control gene, which exhibits uniform expression in living entity during various development stages and under different environmental situations. Among various stresses, drought is one of the limiting constraints in growth and yield of cluster bean (Cyamopsis tetragono/oba). Gene expression study through Real-Time PCR technique is the most common for accurate quantification of genes. However, the pre-requisite for this technique is the normalization of target gene expression, which is not available in case of cluster bean during drought stress. Thus, an experiment was setup to evaluate endogenous gene expression in two cluster bean genotypes viz., Pusa Navbahar and IC369860. A total of 44 housekeeping genes from different legumes were analyzed in cluster bean resulting in EF1a, EF1B, UBQ10, 18SrRNA, 25SrRNA, ACT1, ACT11, IF4a, ADH3, and LEC with successful amplification and analyzed through GeNorm and Normfinder algorithm. It was concluded that among ten endogenous genes, all nine housekeeping genes were more or less influenced by drought stress in cluster bean exceptACT1. Therefore, ACT1 endogenous gene can further be used to normalized the expression of drought responsive genes in RT-PCR. Samarth R. Patel Ranbir S. Fougat Sushil Kumar Amar A. Sakure Poonam Patel ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 307 318 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3316 Seed germination is the most sensitive stage of rice for salinity stress. To map the genomic regions, a set of 117 doubled haploid (DH) lines derived from the F1 s of salinity tolerant Pokkali and susceptible Savitri were used. Preliminary screening at 0, 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 dsm·1 of NaCl solution, Pokkali and Savitri showed significant variation of 78 % and 100 %, respectively for seed germination. Based on this study, 117 DH lines were evaluated at 16 dsm"1 NaCI, which exhibited variation in germination percentage, shoot length and root length. Bulked segregant analysis (BSA) was conducted by taking ten each extreme DH lines with 79 polymorphic SSR markers from 12 chromosomes to identify the genomic regions. Three markers, RM247, RM324 and RM283 were identified and found to be linked to four candidate genes, LOC_Os12g06560, LOC_Os12g06570, LOC Os01 g09550 and LOC Os01 g09560. Further research work is suggested to understand the tolerant mechanism of salinity at germination stage in rice. Umakanta Ngangkham Sonali Nanda Jawahar Lal Katara Sanghamitra Samantaray ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 319 321 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3317 In this study, 29 genotypes of (Lab/ab purpureus) Indian bean augmented from different geographical regions were analyzed for genetic diversity using 39 RAPDs. The binary matrix data revealed 97 .4% polymorphism among genotypes, with 2322 amplification fragments. The PIC values ranged from 0.25 to 0.9 6 with an average of O. 70. Markers OPA05, OPB15, and OPV12 showed high discrimination among all the genotypes. A magnificent range of Jaccard's genetic similarity coefficient was evaluated and UPGMA based dendrogram classified genotypes into 4 major clusters. lC-384066 and NSJ/NAIP/ 192 were found to be unique and highly diversified. The same grouping patterns were also observed in the modelbased STRUCTURE analysis (K=2). The study showed the degree and distribution of genetic diversity in Dolichos bean, which can be utilized to identify the parental lines, to develop mapping populations and breeding. Saidaiah Pidigam Suchandranathbabu Munnam Srinivas Nimmarajula Geetha Amarapalli Harikishan Sudini Someshwar Rao Pandravada Hari Yadla ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 322 326 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3318 Nineteen upland cotton genotypes were evaluated for genetic divergence for development of desirable hybrids. Based on twelve phenotypic markers D2 analysis identified five clusters containing one to ten genotypes. Prinipal Component Aanalysis reduced the twelve variables into four principal components explaining 82.2% variability that clearly indicated the genotypes, H1236, H1472, CSH 3075, ISR 12, H1465 and H1117 were high yielder and H 1236, H 1472, H 1156 and H1476 were having better seed indices traits. Out of 49 SSR primers, 42 were polymorphic and amplified 173 alleles with PIC value ranged from Oto 0.948. The NTSYS-pc UPGMA analysis clustered into seven distinct groups. Sukhdeep Singh Sivia Sunayana S. S. Siwach ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 327 330 https://myresearchjournals.com/index.php/IJGPB/article/view/3319 The inheritance of powdery mildew resistance in sesame was studied in the segregating generations of a cross involving Rama (susceptible) and VRl-1 (resistant) genotypes. The F2 plants segregated in a ratio of 9 (resistant):7 (susceptible) indicating a digenic mode of inheritance with complementary epistasis for powdery mildew resistance in sesame. The RGA marker (h2_ 13m22a) reported to be linked to the powdery mildew resistance in sesame found to produce the expected allele (280bp) in the resistant parent (VRl-1) and the resistant bulk, while the allele was absent in the susceptible parent and the susceptible bulk. In F2 generation plants, the marker h2_ 13m22a co-segregated with the resistant plants indicating its tight linkage with the gene for powdery mildew resistance. The marker would be useful in marker assisted selection of plant in the breeding for powdery mildew resistance in sesame. M. Kabi B. Baisakh T. R. Das S. K. Tripathy M. Dash ##submission.copyrightStatement## http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 2021-05-25 2021-05-25 81 02 331 333