Induced Cytomorphological Variations in Lens Culinaris : Effect of ethyl methane sulphonate and sodium azide on cytomorphological characters in lentil

Considering the importance of lentil as a pulse crop and the mutagenecity of EMS and SA, present study has been aimed at exploring the possibility of inducing alterations in the genotype of lentil (var. K-75 and var. KLB-303) to enhance the variability and screen the plants in M1 generation showing cyto-morphological variations.A perusal of results of various quantitative traits revealed that each trait was affected individually by the mutagen and the differential varietal response to different mutagens was also observed. It is concluded that the genotype of lentil a pulse crop can be improved by using lower and intermediate doses of chemical mutagens, as it is quite clear from the result of present investigation that lower and intermediate doses showed effective shift in the mean values in desired directions.