Morpho-Physiological Traits Influencing the Grain Yield Potential in Small Millets

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the certain morphological and physiological traits influencing the grain yield potential of small millets under irrigated condition. Out of six cultivated small millets, five of them viz., finger millet (CO15), little millet (CO 4), barnyard millet (CO 2), foxtail millet (CO 7) and kodo millet (CO 3) was taken for the study. The experiment was conducted during Rabi, 2015 in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with four replications. The results indicated significant differences among the small millets in plant height, number of tillers per plant, LAI and LAD. The gas exchange parameters differed significantly among the crops leading to significant variation in total dry mater accumulation. However, the productivity was not only dependent on higher values of physiological traits but also on partitioning efficiency and test weight. Leaf area indices at different stages of growth were significantly higher in barnyard millet and it was followed by foxtail millet. Leaf area duration between vegetative to flowering stages was maximum in foxtail millet (48.54 days) and the minimum was observed in kodo millet (15.32 days). The barnyard millet, finger millet and foxtail millet had higher values for most of the physiological traits and yield components leading to higher grain yield when compared to other small millets.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.2018.000186

Pages

476 - 479

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords