Influence of Continuous Gamma Irradiation on Morpho-agronomic Characteristics of Amaranthus caudatus in M1 and M2 Generations

Amaranthus caudatus play an important role against hunger and malnutrition that occur due to low rain fall conditions, gaining a wide attention in food and medicinal industry. Being a versatile plant in terms of its nutritional value the improvement of this plant with reference to germination, growth and yield is still uncharacterized. Therefore the present investigation is carried out to determine the influence of gamma radiation in modifying germination, growth and yield attributes of Amaranthus caudatus. The air dried seeds were exposed to different gamma irradiation doses (10KR, 20KRC, 40KRC and 80KRC) using 60Co source, sowing was carried out in a complete randomized block design, and the observations were taken upto M2 generation. The results showed that the influence of different doses of gamma irradiation on germination parameters was significant in M1 and M2 generations. The influence on the survival percentage was obtained in both M1 and M2 generation, and highest percentage of survival was recorded under 20KRC in both M1 and M2 generations. The average yield per plant in M1 and M2 generations were observed higher under 20KRC dose level of gamma irradiations. The gamma irradiation treatment showed significant enhancement in different growth parameters in both M1 and M2 generations. Also, it was observed that the growth and yield in M2 generation across all doses was better than M1 generation.