Genetic Improvement for Nutritional Parameters and Yield Per Se in Amaranthus Amaranthus spp

Abstract

Amaranthus is one of the ancient food crops of the world that has shown great newlinepromise as a potential multipurpose crop to overcome the problem of malnutrition with newlinesignificant impact towards food and nutritional security. The present investigation on newlineAmaranthus was undertaken for elucidating the information on the performance, genetic newlinevariability and genetic diversity for yield as well as nutritional traits among 124 grain newlineamaranth and 85 vegetable amaranth germplasm accessions. Further, molecular newlinediversity studies in a subset of accessions using SSR and ISSR primers; Stability of newlineselected genotypes (32 in grain and 30 in vegetable amaranth) across three locations; newlineAssessment of segregational variability and identification desirable segregants in the F2 newlinepopulations of two crosses each in grain and vegetable type was also carried out. newlinePromising accessions for grain yield, fresh green yield and nutritional traits were newlineidentified. The accessions viz., IC-35429, GAC 147, EC-150200, GAC-145 and EC- newline389416 revealed better per se performance for grain yield; VA-16 and IC-469579 were newlineidentified as superior vegetable amaranth lines for fresh green yield. Higher genetic newlinevariability estimates were observed for grain yield, plant height, stem diameter spike newlinelength, iron and zinc contents in grain amaranth; fresh green yield, leaf area, leaf weight, newlinestem weight and nutritional traits in vegetable amaranth. Stability performance across newlinethree locations revealed the most stable accessions viz., IC-551502, Suvarna and EC- newline289395 for grain yield and VA-16, CO-1, IC-553719 and IC-469645 for fresh green newlineyield. newlineBased on morphological genetic diversity by considering inter-cluster distance newlineand cluster means, diverse parents were proposed for crossing to combine yield and newlinenutritional traits viz., IC-26278 with GAC-145, EC-389416, IC-35451 and IC-35429 in newlinegrain amaranth; VA-15 with IC-553737 and IC-551494-1 in vegetable amaranth. newlineMolecular diversity analysis revealed rich allelic variation, wherein the ISSR primers, newlineUBC-826, UBC-841 and