Kailash Chandra, R. Nandini, Gobu R., R. Muthuraju, Chitti Bharatkumar and Pranesh
Abstract
Bambara groundnut, being an autogamous crop, many attempts of hybridization has failed due to the lack of knowledge of pollen behavior which is an important pre-requisite to understand the reproductive biology. Being an under-utilized crop, it has not received all the attention as received for other pulses, hence an investigation was carried out at University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK campus, Bengaluru for the first time in India to study the pollen behaviour of different varieties and mutants of variety SB-42. Longest pollen tube (98.37μm) and highest pollen germination (56.61%) obtained from Mutant 24 and mutant 11 respectively hence can be used as a male and female parent in hybridization respectively. The results of the present investigation explored the opportunities of utilizing gametophytic selection in developing hybrids with multiple desired characters.