Journal of Experimental Agriculture International

Niger is one among the important oilseed crops grown in India which requires attention with respect to yield improvement. The present study was conducted to evaluate 34 niger genotypes along with the local check DNS-4 for seed yield and yield attributes in RBD design with two replications at AICRP on Sesame and Niger, UAS, Dharwad during kharif 2021. Results indicated the presence of significant variation among the test genotypes for the traits days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, seed yield/ha and oil content. Genotypes viz., DNS-17, DNS-2, DNS-51, DNS-56, and DNS-66 were early maturing while DNS-08-05 was late maturing. With respect to oil content, genotypes DNS-36 (45.0%), DNS-15 (44.5%) and DNS-24 (44.1%) had more oil content compared to check DNS-4 (43.2%). Among all the test genotypes, DNS-17 (822.2 kg/ha) and DNS-24 (756.9 kg/ha) and DNS-41 (715.3 kg/ha) produced higher seed yield with yield superiority of 19.5%, 10.0% and 4.0% respectively over the check DNS-4 (688.2 kg/ha). From this study the genotypes DNS-17, DNS-24 and DNS-41 were found to be promising owing to higher seed yield, number of capitulum per plant and test weight. Seed yield per plant exhibited significant positive correlation with characters number of branches per plant (0.428), number of capitulum per plant (0.444), test weight (0.453) and oil content (0.555) while it showed significant negative correlation with plant height (-0.35). Hence, these characters may be considered in selection process for yield improvement.