The study of some quantitative characters to groundnuts (Arachis hypogaea L.) in the M2 mutagen generation

Abstract

Arachis hypogaea L. belongs the Fabaceae family, native to South America origine and has 2n=40 chromosomes genom (Marin Ș., 2011). The seeds from three varieties (Tâmburești, Jelud și Braziliene negre) and lines L9184 of peanuts were treated with three chemical mutagens agents, like: ethyl methane sulfonate, dimethyl sulfate and sodium azide. Ethyl methane sulfonate and dimethyl sulfate concentration were 0.2%, 0.4%, 0.6% and 0.8% and sodium azide concentration was 0.02%, 0.04%, 0.06% and 0.08%, each concentration having six hours for action time. The harvested plants were M1 generation each plants seeds being sown in the following year, resulting the M2 generation. We made biometric measurements for all the lines regarding the characters: the number of pods/plant, the number of grains from pods and the weight of grains/plant. By selection, in M2 generation can be identified and selected those useful mutans and plants with valuable traits, mutations being found in homozygous state. In the selection and plant breeding of economically important crops, the first step is to obtain a highly diverse biological material and to induce large individual variability amplitude. In the M2 generation was made a selection based on biometric determinations in all work variants. A special attention has been paid to the criteria selection based on the phenotypic aspects and productivity of the plants from working variants, for this purpose were made observations in the field, in several phenophases. In the M2 generation, for the treated variants, the number of pods per plant was reduced following the mutagen treatments. Excepting the Tâmburești variety, for the other varieties the average weight of beans per plant recorded positive differences compared to the untreated control for all the three mutagens.