The paper investigates the scope of variability in germplasm collection of barnyard millet (Echinochloa frumentacea) for its crop improvement and evolution of new high yielding varieties. This is the quickest growing millet and it produces a crop in a period of six weeks. It is grown in India, Japan and China as a substitute for rice when the rice crop fails. The present investigation is to compare the wild type barnyard millet with the normal type with respect to morphological characters that delineate the three types in two groups is related to the differences in its days of flowering, plant height (cm), total number of tillers, total productive tillers, ear length (cm), days to maturity, anther length, pollen diameter and fertility percentage were studied.

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.

Genetics & Evolution Journal, Palynological Study, Electron Microscopic Studies, Barnyard Crops, Germplasm Materials, Glacial Acetic Acid, Ethanol, Pollen Grains, Acetocarmine, Electron Microscope, Echinochloa Crusgalli, Echinochloa Frumentacea.