Morphological characterization and evaluation of barnyard millet varieties, cultivars and mutants for varietal identification

Abstract

The present study was undertaken to characterize barnyard millet (Echinochloa frumentacaea L.) varieties, cultivars and mutants on the basis of morphological descriptors with the objective to identify the key diagnostic characters of the genotypes. A set of 11 barnyard millet genotypes were evaluated in randomized block design with three replications. A total of 12 morphological characters were observed. All the genotypes were classified into different groups based on each character. Among the 12 characters, nine qualitatitive characters viz., pigmentation, inflorescence colour, inflorescence shape, stamen colour, stigma colour, panicle compactness, spikelet arrangement, lower raceme shape, seed colour and three quantitative characters viz., plant height (cm), 50% of flowering (days) and panicle length (cm) were studied. These differences in morphological traits were useful in identification of individual barnyard millet genotypes.