FLOWERING PATTERN AND REPRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY IN LENTIL

An experiment was conducted to investigate flower production, flowering pattern, reproductive efficiency and their relationship with seed yield in fifteen lentil mutants/cultivars. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replicates. Results of the study revealed that the high yielding genotypes produced higher number of flowers, having longer flowering duration than the low yielding ones. It was also appeared that the high yielding genotypes had higher rate of flower production than the low yielding ones. However, low yielding genotypes had higher reproductive efficiency than high yielding ones with few exceptions. Seed yield had significant positive correlation with pod and flower number whereas negative relation was noted with reproductive efficiency. This aspect may be considered for future plant breeding programme of lentil yield improvement.