EMS Induced Morphometric Biomass and Phytochemical Variations in Morus Species (Genotype RFS135)

Aims: In the present investigation mutations were induced by EMS in rain fed mulberry genotype RFS135 and evolved mutants were evaluated for crop improvement by morphometric and phytochemical studies.

Study Design: Cross-sectional study.

Place and Duration of Study: Department of sericulture, Jnanabharathi, Bangalore University, Bangalore-560056, Karnataka, India, between June 2006 and July 2010.

Methodology: The active bud sprouts of vegetative cuttings of RFS135 in multiple sets were

treated for twelve hours intermittently (every one hour) with three different concentrations (0.1%, 0.3% and 0.5%).Further M1V1 and M1V2 generation clones were evaluated for biomass, nutritive and morpho-metric characters.

Results: The results revealed that concentrations of 0.1% and 0.3% EMS treatment were effective in significantly altering the morpho-metric characters, biomass yield and phyto chemical constituents. The significant variation in the morpho-metric characters such as height of the plant, number of branches, stem girth, number of leaves per plant and increased biomass was recorded among the M1V2 clones of 0.1% EMS treatment (p=0.0001) and 0.3% EMS treatment (p=0.0006). Further significant improvement was recorded in nutritive parameters such as proteins, reducing sugars, minerals and moisture content. Moisture retention capacity and Chlorophyll contents were also found to be high in mutant clones recovered from 0.1% and 0.3% EMS treatments.

Conclusion: This suggests that EMS at lower concentrations below 0.5% can be safely used for crop improvement in mulberry and can also be tried in other vegetative propagated crops.