VARIABILITY FOR FORAGE YIELDING TRAITS IN EXOTIC GRASS PEA (LATHYRUS SATIVUS L.)
ARCHANA SINGH* AND A. K. ROY
Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute,
Jhansi (U. P.) India
*(Email: archanasingh69@rediffmail.com)
(Received: 25 September 2013; Accepted: 26 Octember 2013)
SUMMARY
Eighteen exotic accessions of high biomass grass pea were evaluated for green forage and dry matter yield potential in Jhansi, Bundelkhand region of U.P. High magnitude of variability was observed for the 8 qualitative traits viz., growth habit, leaf colour, flower colour, anthocyanin pigmentation, pod shape, and seed shape, colour and size, and 8 quantitative traits viz., plant height, primary and secondary branches, nodes/plant, leaves/plant, green forage and dry matter yield and protein content. Out of the 18 accessions, 4 were found promising for green fodder yield, 3 for dry matter yield, 4 for high number of branching pattern, 3 for good plant height, 2 for more number of leaves and nodes per plant and 3 for red flower colour. However, protein content has not shown much promise to select the promising lines.
Key words: Accessions, Green forage yield (GFY), Dry matter yield (DMY), Variation, Lathyrus sativus.