GENETIC VARIANCE AND PERFORMANCE OF SESAME MUTANTS FOR YIELD CONTRIBUTING CHARACTERS

Abstract

In Bangladesh average sesame production is lower than other sesame producing country of the world, Therefore an experiment was conducted using five sesame M5 mutants along with the mother variety to observe their performances regarding seed yield and other yield attributes. Analysis of variance showed highly significant variations among the mutants and check for most of the characters. The mutant SM-07 required the shortest maturity period and produced the tallest plant and highest number of capsules plant-1 in each location and combined over locations, where as SM-01 and the mother variety Binatil-1 required the longest maturity period. Results over different locations also showed that the three mutants SM-06, SM-04 and SM-07 produced significantly higher seed yield (1477, 1449 and 1438 kg ha-1, respectively) which was 7.3, 5.2 and 4.4% higher than the mother variety Binatil-1 with seed yield of 1377 kg ha-1. This suggests that mutation techniques can be fruitfully applied to develop variety with higher seed yield and other improved agronomic traits of sesame.