SELECTING MUNGBEAN GENOTYPES FOR FODDER PRODUCTION ON THE BASIS OF DEGREE OF INDETERMINACY AND BIOMASS

Abstract

Rapid change in the environment due to global warming is not only linked with the scarcity of food but with the availability of green fodder also. Thirty mungbean genotypes were evaluated using randomized complete block design for fodder yield across years at two extreme environments of Pakistan; badly affecting by the flood. Broad-sense heritability and selection response were studied for degree of indeterminacy, petiole length, fresh and dry biomass. Significant differences at (P≥0.01) were spotted out among the genotypes at both locations for the parameters under study. All the genotypes responded differently for petiole length, fresh and dry biomass in selected years except degree of indeterminacy that did not affected by the weather change in a particular environment. Of the first order interactions (L×Y, G×L), variation was observed for degree of indeterminacy while; dry biomass was highly significant only for G×L and G×Y. However, G×L×Y was absolutely non-significant for parameters studied. The parameters studied for fodder purpose were greatly influenced by the two environments. Means for degree of indeterminacy, petiole length, fresh and dry biomass were 43.1 compared to 20.8, 13.8 compared to 15.5, 29.9 compared to 40.2 and 5.5 compared to 8.3 at Peshawar and Swat respectively. On the basis of degree of indeterminacy genotype ‘NFM-8-1’ was categorized as determinate and ‘NFM-13-1’ as highly indeterminate. The only genotype ‘NFM-14-6’ has maximum fresh and dry biomass, provided the better opportunity for selection as fodder for the extreme environments of Pakistan. The values for genetic variance were greater in magnitude than environmental variance at Peshawar than Swat for degree of indeterminacy. However, for the rest of the parameters the influence of environmental variance was higher at both locations. On the other hand genetic × year variances were almost negligible for the tested parameters. Heritability estimates for all the parameters and expected response to selection for most of the parameters were generally greater in magnitude at Peshawar than at Swat, except fresh biomass. Selection for degree of indeterminacy showed effectiveness at Peshawar than Swat. Broad- sense heritability and response to selection was enough high for fresh biomass at Swat suggested selection for the improvement of the said trait at Swat.