An efficient selfing technique for inbred development-A prerequisite for hybrid production in petunia

Abstract: Petunia is one of the important bedding plants and occupies an ever increasing demand in flower seed industry. The present study was carried out to evaluate various selfing techniques to identify the efficient one for the production of large quantity of seeds in short duration to facilitate inbred development. Different selfing techniques like threading, manual pollination, bagging of single bud and bagging of multiple buds were tried in three inbred lines and also their interactions were studied. The results indicated that bagging of multiple buds took minimum days to seed set, higher pod weight and highest number of seeds/mg. Seed germination percentage was high in manual pollination followed by bagging of multiple buds. Inbred lines IIHRP-WT gave best results as compared to other inbred lines. Interaction of this inbred line with bagging of multiple buds gave good seed quality results like higher pod weight and number of seeds/mg.