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Plant Science Today (PST)

Research Articles

Vol. 12 No. sp4 (2025): Recent Advances in Agriculture by Young Minds - III

Agro-morphological trait diversity of barnyard millet germplasm for utilization in crop genetic improvement

DOI
https://doi.org/10.14719/pst.10529
Submitted
8 July 2025
Published
23-10-2025

Abstract

Barnyard millet is a small grain cereal classified as a minor millet, which is highly nutritious and adaptable to various agro-climatic zones and harsh environments. To understand the agro- morphological diversity, a study was conducted using 515 accessions along with three checks: VL 207, DHBM 93-3 and VL 172,         employing an augmented block design. Highly significant treatment effects were shown through Analysis of variance (ANOVA) for basal tillers, flowering time and plant height, while block effects were mostly non-significant except for basal tillers. The outcomes from principal component analysis (PCA) stated that 60.1 % of the total variation was explained by the first four principal components. The first principal component traits included days to 50 % flowering, flag leaf blade width, flag leaf blade length, panicle length, peduncle length and panicle width contributed to 29.4 %. Results from the scree plot demonstrated that the majority of the diversity observed in the studied germplasm was from first two components. Out of 515 accessions, 49 accessions were identified for superior performance of multiple traits. The accessions IC0472499 and IC0281471 were identified superior for multiple (five) traits and can be further used as donor parents for specific traits in crop improvement programmes. This study emphasizes that genetic and phenotypic characterization of a large set of germplasm collections helps in identifying trait donors for the improvement of high-yielding, resilient and disease-resistant crops.

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