ICAR okays Punjab agri univ's wheat variety for NW plains

By Staff
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Google Oneindia News

Ludhiana , Sep 4: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has recommended the release of PBW 550, a wheat variety developed by Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), for the farmers in the forthcoming wheat sowing season.

This variety has been recommended for release in the entire North Western Plains Zone of India (NWPZ) comprising the states of Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, western Uttar Pradesh, parts of Rajasthan and foothills of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

This new variety is significantly superior to all the checks with respect to grain yield and also has a very good grain quality and high degree of resistance to yellow and brown rust. This variety possesses resistance to the predominant race (78S84) of yellow rust to which all presently recommended varieties are susceptible.

The ICAR gave the nod to this variety at the 46th All India Wheat and Barley Research Workers' Meeting organised at the Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, Rahuri, College of Agriculture, Pune last week.

Dr Mangala Rai, Director General, ICAR and other top ICAR scientists attended this meeting.

Others who participated in this meeting, included Dr B Mishra, Project Director, Directorate of Wheat Research, Karnal who presented the highlights of the research activities carried out in the country during 2006-07 on wheat and barley. Top researchers of agricultural universities including Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) also participated in this meeting.

Dr S P Tiwari, Deputy Director General (CS&Hort), ICAR, New Delhi chaired the meeting on 'Special Committee for Identification of Wheat Varieties.

The varieties evaluated in the National Initial Varietal Trials (NIVT) at the Pune conference were contributed by different wheat research centres in the country as per a fixed alloted quota.

However, the promotion to Advanced Varietal Trials (AVT) was based on the merit of the variety.

The relative contribution in Advanced Varietal Trials is an indicator of the performance of a breeding programme. In the irrigated timely sown AVT trials to be conducted in NWPZ during 2007-08, six varieties shall be evaluated as final year entries (PBW 580, PBW 581, PBW 582, PBW 583, PBW 585 and PBW 588), all of which are from PAU.

Similarly, in the durum wheat AVT, PBW 308 shall be the final year entry. In the bread wheat AVT for late sown conditions, two varieties PBW 590 and PBW 593 shall be evaluated as final year entries and both are from PAU.

Thus, nine out of total ten final year entries in NWPZ are from PAU and these entries will be the candidates for identification during the next wheat workshop of ICAR.

In the North Eastern Plains Zone (NEPZ), PAU's PBW 612 was promoted to advance varietal trial in rainfed timely sown conditions by ICAR. In the Central Zone, PBW 312 has been promoted to AVT durum wheat. In the Peninsular Zone (PZ), PBW 596 shall be the final year entry in AVT restricted irrigation and PBW 607 and PBW 611 have been promoted to AVT late sown trial.

One triticale wheat variety TL 2959 was promoted to both AVT irrigated and AVT rainfed timely sown trial of Northern Hills Zone (NHZ) in the Conference. Another triticale entry TL 2961 has been promoted to both AVT rainfed and AVT restricted irrigation trial of Central Zone (CZ).

One barley variety PL 808 has been promoted to AVT irrigated trial of NWPZ by ICAR.

UNI

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