Normal cultivated types are: small flower size,
early hours of flowering, short viability of pollen, non-availability of pollen grain and
slight opening of flowers that too in short period, while these new types of germplasm IEC
566 and IEC 566/2 produced abundant pollen grains open for a long time, protrude enough
to do emasculation and collection of pollen grains facilitating emasculation and
crossing. The results indicate that the potential of barnyard millet in enhancing the
hybridization work which in turn will help in genetic analysis, heterotic study and generating
more segregants for further barnyard crop improvement.
Echinochloa crusgalli is a type of wild grass originating from tropical Asia that
was formerly classified as a type of panicum grass. It is commonly known as
cockspur, common barnyard grass or barnyard grass. The plant has attracted some attention as
a fodder in the US and Japan. Echinochloa
crusgalli was domesticated in Japan 4000 years ago and E. colona was domesticated in India. The genus Echinochloa is classified into two species, four subspecies and eight races. The two subspecies are E. colona and E. crusgalli. Inflorescence is digitate panicle, contracted or pyramidal, spikes
may be thickened with densely packed in 3-5 rows, turgid, glumes two
(G1, G2), lower floret (L1, P1 absent) sterile, upper floret (L2, P2) fertile, hermaphrodite,
stamens three, ovary superior, styles two with plumose stigma. A number of authors
studied the pollen morphology of family graminae such
as Wodehouse (1935), Firbas (1937), Jones and Newell (1948), Sampath and Ramnathan (1951), Ethirajan (1953),
Rowley (1960), Bourriel and Reyre (1968), De Lisle (1970) and Siddiqui and Qaiser (1988).
Pollen of some European grasses was examined by Faegri and Iversen (1964). Andersen
and Bertelsen (1972) examined pollen grains of some members of
gramineae by scanning electron microscope. The present investigation is to compare the wild type
barnyard millet with the normal type with respect to morphological characters of the
plant, panicle, spikelet, anther and pollen grains.
The present study involves three barnyard millet lines viz., IEC 566, IEC 566/2 and Co
1 which differ in their characters like plant type, panicle, spikelet, anther and pollen.
The materials were obtained from the Department of Millets, Centre for Plant
Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. Among the three entries,
Co 1 is cultivated type and IEC 566 and IEC 566/2 differ in several aspects with
the cultivated variety. The observations were recorded on five randomly selected
competitive plants for traits viz., plant height (cm), days to flowering, total number of tillers,
total productive tillers, panicle length (cm) and days to maturity. Fertility percent and size
of anther and pollen were carried out to differentiate both. |