Kumari  J.¹ , Kumar A.¹ , Bhatt  K.C.¹ , Mishra  A.K.² , Singh  T.P.¹ , Sharma  R.K.¹

1 ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi, India
2 ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, RS, Shillong, India
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2016, Vol. 7, No. 12   doi: 10.5376/pgt.2016.07.0012
Received: 01 Sep., 2016    Accepted: 15 Sep., 2016    Published: 24 Oct., 2016

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Kumari J., Kumar A., Bhatt K.C., Mishra A.K., Singh T.P., and Sharma R.K., 2016, Characterization of maize collections from Nagaland state of North Eastern Himalayan region, Plant Gene and Trait, 7(12): 1-7 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2016.07.0012)

Traditional cultivars and primitive landraces of maize (Zea mays L.) are invaluable treasure for humankind. These need to be collected, evaluated, conserved and utilized for increasing agricultural production and quality enhancement. Based on extensive survey, 58 diverse maize accessions were collected from Nagaland state of the North Eastern Himalayan region during year 2011. These collections were evaluated under two different agro-ecological regions located at New Delhi and Shillong using twelve quantitative variables during kharif 2012 and 2013 and nine qualitative traits. Significant variability was observed for the traits studied. The trait mean performance and variability were compared for both the environments and superior collections were identified. This study clearly demonstrated that despite environment-specific adaptations, several accessions are capable of showing high adaptability at region outside their habitat and could be utilized for diversifying the pools and deriving inbred lines with diverse features.

Maize; NEH region; Landraces; Descriptors; Characterization