Evaluation of Summer Groundnut Genotypes for Dry Matter Production and its Partitioning Studies (Arachis hypogaea L.)

The population of twelve germplasm lines was evaluated in randomized block design (RBD) with three replications at AICRPon Groundnut, MPKV, Rahuri, and Dist. Ahmednagar (M.S.) during summer 2012 to study the physiological analysis of growth and yield variation in groundnut genotypes. The observations on plant height, number of branches, number of leaves, leaf area, dry matter production and its partitioning in components plant parts viz. root, stem, leaves and pods, photosynthetic rate, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance, yield and yield contributing characters and protein and oil content were recorded. The plant height, number of branches, number of leaves and leaf area were increasing rapidly upto 100 DAS and slowed down thereafter. Dry matter of leaf, stem, pods per plant differed significantly throughout the growth period. Studies on leaf area revealed that, it is good for increasing photosynthetic efficiency of plant. The genotypes significantly differed in respect of yield per plant. The highest dry pod yield was recorded by the genotypes WRGS-15, JL-501, RHRG-6021 and JALW-02 due to significant favourable yield contributing characters like number of mature pods per plant, dry pod yield (gm) per plant, 100 kernels weight (gm) and harvest index. On the basis of morpho-physiological traits and bio-chemical parameters, WRGS-15, JL-501, RHRG-6021, JALW-02 and TAG-24 were considered as promising genotypes for future breeding programme for yield improvement and protein and oil content.