Mungbean is excellent source of high quality protein and mineral. The seeds have high (28%) protein that is easily digestible, are easy to cook and lack flatulence factors in contrast to other legumes. The legume provides a cash crop for farmers with its stable, high market price and demand across Asia.
The mung cultivation is helping in fixing the nitrogen into soil. As rice-wheat rotation is the dominant cropping pattern in many regions of northern and central part of India. With wheat harvested in March followed by rice transplanting in July, a substantial amount of land remains fallow for about 90 to 100 days. Mung cultivation has given a break to mono cropping of wheat and soybean, thus improving soil fertility. The summer mung crop requires an assured pre-sowing irrigation for germination and early establishment of seedlings. However, due to the erratic nature of monsoon rains and high vapour pressure deficit in hot and windy climate of summer season, stored soil moisture depletes rapidly resulting in severe water deficits and drastic reduction in mungbean yield. To encounter this problem, an economically and environmentally viable solution is development of new mungbean genotypes with drought tolerance.
In the light of above objectives, scientists of Indian Institute of Pulse Research (IIPR), Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India undertook a study to assess the genotypic differences in physiological traits and agronomic traits in mungbean and to measure the association of these traits with crop performance under drought conditions. A set of 100 genotypes was evaluated using drought sensitive (ML 5 & 1PM 99-125) and drought tolerant checks (1PM 2-14 & 1PM 2-3) in both field and rainout shelter condition in RCBD design during 2019 & 2020. The experiment was done at 3 levels of treatment: no stress, stress at the vegetative stage, and stress at the reproductive stage by withdrawal of irrigation for 15 days .
The observation was recorded for parameters like soil moisture status, and agronomic and physiological traits at various stages of the experiment. Based on the analysis of two year pooled mean value and comparative studies four genotypes viz., 1PM 06- 5, MH421, BIG 0068-1 and MH 03-18 noticed higher value of (Fv/Fm),which indicates increased photosynthetic efficiency, photosynthetic electron transport (ETR), SPAD, relative leaf water content, 100-seed weight (>4.5 gm) with enhanced seed yield. In addition, relative leaf water content (RWC) was positively correlated to the number of pods per plant and seed yield. Therefore, it was concluded that genotypes which maintained high RWC produced higher seed yield under drought stress condition. Hence, these genotypes will be used as a potential source for development of drought tolerant varieties in mungbean breeding.
Credits:Basavaraja. T, Aditya Pratap, Manu. B, Vikas Dubey, Revanappa, B, PS Basu, Farindra Singh and NP Singh, IIPR, Kanpur
Source: IIPR Newsletter
