Genetic Variability Analysis of Gamma Irradiated M2 Populations for Higher Oleic Acid Content in TMV (Gn) 13 (Arachis hypogaea L.)

Background: Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is an important commercial crop augmenting protein and oil industry. Breeding for improved peanut crop with higher oleic acid content through induced mutagenesis could the best cooking oil in terms of health benefits. Further, the knowledge of the variability parameters and frequency distribution of desired traits could benefit plant breeders while developing selection criteria to maximising the genetic gain. Methods: The present study aimed to determine the mean lethal dose (LD 50) of gamma irradiation on groundnut TMV (Gn) 13) to create the genetic variability and to screen the putative mutants with allele specific primers based on phenotypic and agronomic traits. Result: Five traits viz., plant height, number of pods per plant, pod length, pod width and pod yield per plant had expressed significantly higher heritability coupled with high Genetic advance per cent of Mean substantiating the role of additive gene action. Also, the frequency distribution pointed out the positively skewed traits in both the populations. Further, molecular validation through AS-PCR assay revealed the presence of ahFAD2A mutant allele in 4 out of 155 putative mutants. As a result, these mutants have 43-45% oleic acid than the control TMV (Gn) 13, which has 35-39%.