A Letter

Resonses of Specific Leaf Weight, Crop Growth Rate, Total Dry Matter Production and Yield Characters of Ragi (Finger Millet) (Eleusine coracana) Entries under Rainfed Conditions  

Krishna Surendar1 , Mohammad Jalaludhin2
1 Assistant Professor (Crop Physiology), Regional Research Station, TNAU, Paiyur,India
2 Professor and Head, Regional Research Station, TNAU, Paiyur,India
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2016, Vol. 7, No. 9   doi: 10.5376/pgt.2016.07.0009
Received: 29 Apr., 2016    Accepted: 15 May, 2016    Published: 01 Aug., 2016
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Preferred citation for this article:

Surendar K., and Jalaludhin M., 2016, Resonses of Specific Leaf Weight, Crop Growth Rate, Total Dry Matter Production and Yield Characters of Ragi (Finger Millet) (Eleusine coracana) Entries under Rainfed Conditions, Plant Gene and Trait, 6(9): 1-13 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2016.07.0009)

Abstract

The field experiment was conducted during August-December 2014 to study the physiological and bio chemical responses ragi entries under rainfed conditions. The experiment was laid out in a Randomized Block Design with three replications. Seven entries were subjected to rainfed conditions viz., (V1) Paiyur 2, (V2) CO7, (V3) CO 15, (V4) L 5, (V5) GPU 28, (V6) KRI 007-01 and (V7) KRI 009-01 with the spacing of 22.5 x 10 cm after receiving the rainfall of 37.4 mm. The total amount of rainfall during August, September, October and November is 37.4 mm, 106.2 mm, 248.7 mm and 35.8 mm. The Specific Leaf Weight (SLW), Crop Growth Rate (CGR) and Total dry matter production (TDMP) were measured at 45th, 60th, 75th DAS and at Harvest stages. The yield parameters were measured at harvest stages. The SLW, CGR and TDMP were significantly enhanced by the entries of KRI 009-01 and showed its superiority when compared to other entries at 45th, 60th, 75th DAS and at Harvest stages, which was followed by PYR 2. The lowest performance was noticed in GPU 28 under rainfed conditions. Comparing the seven entries, KRI 009-01 and PYR 2 had the highest plot yield (5.16 kg and 5.05 kg plot-1) and hectare yield (74.9 Q and 74.6 Q ha-1). Therefore, the entries of KRI 009-01 and PYR performed superior and were identified suitable entries for growing under rainfed conditions.

Keywords
SLW; CGR; TDMP; Yield; Ragi; Rainfed

1 Introduction

Finger millet or Mandua or Bird’s foot millet commonly known as ragi (Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.) is an essential small millet crop ranked third in India in area and production and has the pride of place in having the highest productivity among the millets after sorghum and pearlmillet (Saravanapandian et al., 2005). It is a staple food crop in many hilly regions of the country. It is grown both for grain and fodder purposes. The crop is well adapted to very poor and marginal uplands where other crops cannot be grown successfully (AICSMIP, 2008). The cultivated area of finger millet in India is 15.4 lakh ha, production is 2.15 million tonnes with an average productivity of 1 402 kg ha-1. In Tamil Nadu, finger millet is the most important traditional millet crop grown over an area of 82 335 ha, with production of 1.61 lakh tonnes and the productivity of 1 955 kg ha-1 and provides food and nutritional security to the marginal farmers in the rainfed drylands and hilly tribal areas (Season and Crop Report, 2010). 

 

Drought adversely affects some of the important physiological, biophysical and biochemical processes of the plants, like chlorophyll destruction, enzymatic activities and protein synthesis. It has been documented that root growth, leaf area development, and osmatic adjustment under stress are some of the guidelines in characterizing the genotypes for stress tolerance in ragi (Blum and Sullivan, 1987). Screening varieties for relative drought tolerance has been attempted by various workers using different physiological and biochemical mechanism in various crops but very limited attempt available in ragi crop. Thus, this experiment was conducted for screening the ragi cultivars under rainfed conditions through the morpho-physiological, root characters and total chlorophyll, Relative Water Content will be taken in to consideration to assess the response of the various ragi entries under rainfed condition.

 

2 Result and Discussion

2.1 Specific Leaf Weight (SLW), Crop Growth Rate (CGR) and Total Dry Matter Production

Specific Leaf Weight (SLW), a measure of thickness of leaf, has been reported to have a strong positive correlation with leaf photosynthesis in several crops as reported by Bowes et al. (1972). In many crop species, thicker leaves would have more number of mesophyll cells with high density of chlorophyll and, therefore, have a greater photosynthetic capacity than thinner leaves (Craufurd et al., 1999).  Specific Leaf Weight is highly correlated with the development of reproductive organ namely flower and ultimately yield. As observed in the present study, SLW, CGR and TDMP were recorded at 45th, 60th, 75th DAS and at harvest stages. Among the seven cultivars, the highest growth attributes characters were noticed in KRI 009-01 at all the growth stages, which was followed by Paiyur 2 and both are on par with each other. The lowest performance was noticed in CO 15 and GPU 28. Dornhoff and Shibles (1970) presumed that higher SLW might be associated with higher cell surface to volume ratio and hence lower mesophyll resistance to CO2 entry and increase in photoassimilates accumulation in soybean.

 

2.2 Yield

The yield was recorded at harvest stage, plot yield and yield ha-1 were recorded after threshing(Table 1;Table 2). Comparing the seven entries, KRI 009-01 had highest hectare yield of (39.95 Q ha-1) with 7.3 per cent yield increase over GPU 28, which was followed by KRI007-01 and Paiyur 2 with 5.2 and 2.7 per cent increase the yield than the GPU 28. Therefore, the entries of KRI 009-01 performed superior over the other entries and it was identified as drought tolerant and KRI009-01 suitable for grown under rainfed conditions.
 
 

Table 1 Responses of ragi cultivars under rain-fed conditions on Specific Leaf Weight and Crop Growth Rate at different growth stages
 
 

Table 2 Responses of ragi cultivars under rain-fed conditions on TDMP at different growth stages and yield at harvest stage
 
3 Findings

The variety KRI 009-01 recorded the maximum SLW, CGR and TDMP. The entries KRI 009-01 had maximum yield. Based on this result, the entries of KRI 009-01 was found to be superior over the other entries for tolerance to drought under rainfed conditions.

 

References

Bowes G.W., Orgen L., and Hageman R.H., 1972, Light saturated photosynthesis rate, RuBp Carboxylase activity and specific leaf weight in soybean grown under different light intensities, Crop Sci., 12: 77-79

http://dx.doi.org/10.2135/cropsci1972.0011183X001200010025x

 

Craufurd P.C., Wheelee T.R., Ellis R.H., Summer Field R.J., and Williams J.H., 1999, Effect of temperature and water deficit on water use efficiency, carbon isotope discrimination and specific leaf weight in peanut, Crop Sci., 39: 136-142

http://dx.doi.org/10.2135/cropsci1999.0011183X003900010022x

 

Dornhoff G.M., and Shibles R.M., 1970, Varital differences in net photosynthesis of soybean leaves, Crop Sci., 10: 42-45

http://dx.doi.org/10.2135/cropsci1970.0011183X001000010016x

 

Saravanapandian P., Masilamani, and Annadurai K., 2008, Indian Journal of Forestry (India), 31(3): 399-404

 

Blum A. and Sullivan C.Y., 1987, The comparative drought resistance of land races of sorghum and millet from dryland humid regions, Annals of Botany, 57: 835-846

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aob.a087168