Mutation breeding in Dianthus caryophyllus for economic traits

Dianthus caryophyllus is a commercial season based floricultural crop which grows well in temperate climate all over the worldand popular as cut-flowers for its variegated petal’s colour. So, it has terrific market demands in international trading. In thismodern era, an agronomic demand of high yielding cultivar of this crop was noticed. Development of cultivars with moredesirable floral characteristics and higher productivity are also very important in this crop. Keeping this view in our mind, weundertook the venture of mutation breeding programme by selecting chemical mutagens, viz. Colchicine (Col), Ethyl MethaneSulphonate (EMS), and Maleic Hydrazide (MH) at different concentrations, which were applied on the seeds and leaves. The firstmutation generation (M1) seeds of the crop were harvested properly and kept in dessicator for its proper restoring. Thereafter, thesecond mutation generation (M2) seeds were grown in the next season for availing M2 populations. Various biometricalcharacters viz. number of tillering per plant, total number of flowers, length (cm) of flowers, length (cm) of petals and weight (g)of 1000 seeds were studied and the obtained raw data were analyzed following the ANOVA model.