Ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) is an economically important and valuable spice crop around the world. It is used as food, spice, condiment, and medicine. A considerable extent of genetic diversity in ginger occurs in the Western Ghats and North-Eastern India. However, genetic diversity studies at the molecular level in ginger is limited due to limited availability of genetic and genomic information. In the present study, for the first time, we have identified and validated expressed sequence tag (EST)-simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers from ginger. We obtained 16,790 EST-SSR loci from 78987 unigenes, and 4597 SSR loci in the predicted 76929 coding sequences from RNA-Seq assembled contigs of ginger through Illumina paired-end sequencing. Gene ontology results indicate that the unigenes with SSR loci participate in various biological processes such as metabolism, growth, and development in ginger. One hundred and twenty-five primer pairs were designed from unigenes and coding sequences. These primers were tested for PCR optimization, characterization, and amplification and identified 12 novel EST-SSR markers. Twelve flanking polymorphic EST-SSR primers were validated using 48 ginger genotypes representing North-Eastern India and different eco-geographical adaptations by PCR amplification and allele sizing through capillary electrophoresis. Twelve EST-SSR primers generated a total of 111 alleles with an average of 9.25 alleles per locus and allele sizes ranging between 115-189bp. This study implies that the SSR markers designed from transcriptome sequences provides ample EST-SSR resources, which are helpful for genetic diversity analysis of Zingiberaceae species and molecular verification of ginger genotypes.
The present study floral biology and ancillary characteristics of Bambara groundnut used SB-42, Uniswa Red, S-165-A, S-193 and nine isolated gamma irradiated stabilized mutants of SB-42 for this investigation. Mutant 11 produced significantly maximum number of pods per plant (46.05 g/ plant) and seed yield per plant (28.96 g/plant), compared to control SB-42 (40.85 g/plant, 20.54 g/plant) respectively. Results obtained from flower biology studies were, Inflorescence-Simple Racemes, Flower-Bracteates, Zygomorphic, Hermaphrodite, Pedicellate, hypogynous, Calyx-sepal 5, gamosepalous, valvate aestivation, Corolla-petals 5, Polypetalous, Papilionaceous with a standard (vexilum/banner) petal, 2 wing petals(Alae) and 2 keel petals (Carinea), Androecium-stamens 10, Didelphous condition (9+1), Gynoecium-Ovary superior, Floral formula-Br Brl % K (5) C 1+ 2 + (2) A 9+1 G (1).
Drought stress severely affects plant growth and development, causing significant yield loss in rice. This study demonstrates the relevance of water use efficiency with deeper rooting along with other root traits and gas exchange parameters. Forty-nine rice genotypes were evaluated in the basket method to examine leaf-level water use efficiency (WUEi) variation and its relation to root traits. Significant variation in WUEi was observed (from 2.29 to 7.39 µmol CO2 mmol−1 H2O) under drought stress. Regression analysis revealed that high WUEi was associated with higher biomass accumulation, low transpiration rate, and deep rooting ratio. The ratio of deep rooting was also associated with low internal CO2 concentration. The association of deep rooting with lower root number and root dry weight suggests that an ideal drought-tolerant genotype with higher water use efficiency should have deeper rooting (>30% RDR) with moderate root number and root dry weight to be sustained under drought for a longer period. The study also revealed that, under drought stress conditions, landraces are more water-use efficient with superior root traits than improved genotypes.
Generation mean analysis was carried out using two crosses, involving a high yielding drought susceptible variety NDR 359 and drought tolerant rainfed cultivars Nagina 22 and Vandana. Six generations namely P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2 were grown under both rainfed and irrigated environment to study the gene action for various yield and drought tolerance traits. Scaling test revealed the presence of epistasis for most of the yield and drought tolerance traits in both the crosses. Hence, six parameter model was adopted for these traits and for few traits where epistasis was absent, three parameter model was used. The results revealed that dominance gene effect along with non-allelic interactions had profound effect on the genetic control of majority of the yield traits. Therefore, early generation selection will be misleading for these traits. However, the drought tolerance related traits like proline content and stomatal conductance were governed by additive component as well. Duplicate epistasis was observed for majority of the traits. Hence, present study indicates that, epistasis has a key role in the expression of almost all the traits in both the environment.
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