Evaluation of Underutilized Kodo Millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum L.) Accessions using Morphological and Quality Traits

Background: Kodo millet is an important drought tolerant crop and has high nutritional values, dietary fiber and antioxidant properties. It has considerable production potential in marginal and low fertility soils under diverse environmental conditions. Considering the importance of the crop, it is necessary to improve the nutritional quality along with grain yield of the crop. With this background, the investigation was aimed to study the correlation and path coefficient analysis which helps to identify the promising traits for yield and quality improvement. Methods: One hundred and three kodo millet germplasm lines were evaluated for 13 morpho-agronomic and two grain nutritional traits. The crop was raised in randomized block design to select the promising genotypes and to study the association among the traits and the magnitude of direct and indirect effects for fifteen quantitative traits. Result: Based on the overall mean performance the significant genotypes were identified and found wide range of variability for different traits. Character association studies indicated that days to first flowering, days to 50 per cent flowering, plant height, number of productive tillers, peduncle length, inflorescence length, length of the longest raceme and thumb length were significantly positive association with grain yield per plant. Path coefficient analysis revealed that inflorescence length, plant height, length of the longest raceme, flag leaf blade length and number of productive tillers exhibited high direct positive effect on grain yield. Therefore, giving importance of these traits during selections may be useful for developing nutritionally superior high yielding kodo millet genotypes.