Effect of physical and chemical mutagens on morphological characters and vegetative abnormalities in commercial varieties of gladiolus (Gladiolus grandiflorus L.)

The current study was conducted to investigate entitled “Effect of physical and chemical mutagens on morphological characters and vegetative abnormalities in commercial varieties of gladiolus was laid out in Factorial Randomized Block Design with three replications, nine treatments, and 18 treatment combinations separately during rabi season of 2020-21 and 2021-22 at Department of Horticulture, Janta College, Bakewar, Etawah. The corms of two cultivars American Beauty and Nova Lux were irradiated with gamma 1kR, 2 kR, 3 kR, 4kR and 5 kR and for chemical mutagenesis the corms were dipped in a solution of 0.4% EMS, 0.6% EMS and 0.8% EMS. The Gamma irradiation of corms has been done at Gamma chamber at CSIRNational Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow (India) during First week of November 2020. In M2 generation results indicated that the mutagenic treatments at lower doses had significant stimulative effect on some parameters. The maximum length of largest leaf (2kR gamma irradiation), width of longest leaf (1kRgamma irradiation) and number of leaves per plant (2kR gamma irradiation) were recorded. The maximum vegetative abnormalities (%) were observed under the treatment @ (5kR Gamma irradiation), followed by @ (0.8% EMS solution) under the south-western agro-climatic conditions of Uttar Pradesh. Thus it could be concluded that Gamma irradiations and EMS at lower concentrations gave better results.