Morphological, yield and quality performance of introgression trispecies derivatives of cotton (G. hirsutum L. x G. barbadense L.) x G. arboreum L.)

The experiment was carried out in CRS, Nanded, Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Agricultural University, to evaluate the effect of chromosomal ploidy level on morphological, yield and quality parameters of introgressed trispecies derivatives of cotton. Fifty introgressed trispecies derivatives of the cotton genotype obtained in the BC1F21 generation of a trispecies cross of [(G. hirsutum x G. barbadanse) x G. arboreum] were used to determine the chromosomal behaviour, yield, morphology and fibre quality traits. During meiosis, variation in chromosome number ranging from 47 to 54.5 was observed against the normal chromosomal behaviour of G. arboreum (2n == 26) and G. hirsutum (2n=4x=52). Yield and morphologically, these derivatives increased significantly over the check varieties, while fibre quality traits, viz., upper half mean length (UHML) and uniformity index, were found to be inferior than the check hybrid DCH-32, however, it was followed by other checks, viz., NH-615, DHY-286 and PA-183. The fibre strength was found to be superior over all the checks. These results indicate that these developed lines had introgression character from species viz., hirsutum, arboreum and barbadense.