Protein is an important part of our diet and legumes viz., pigeonpea, chickpea, groundnut, cowpea, blackgram, greengram, etc are very rich source of protein. Among them, pigeonpea consists of about 20 to 22% of seed protein. Minicore collection set is consisted of approximately 10 % of core collection and 1% of entire collection with lot of diversity present in it. Nitrogen content of pigeonpea minicore collection set was estimated using Micro-Kjeldhal method and was ranged from 9.82 to 21.45 %. Based on per cent seed protein, twelve accessions of high and twelve accessions of low seed protein were selected for molecular characterization using 23 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. The PowerMarker result depicted that, among twenty three amplified markers, twenty markers generated polymorphism with mean polymorphic information content (PIC), major allele frequency (MAF) and genetic diversity of 0.479, 0.589 and 0.525 respectively. Based on molecular characterization, the dendrogram was constructed using DARwin 5.0 software distinguished the selected accessions of both high and low seed protein separately into different clusters showing diversity The results illustrate the potential of marker systems to distinguish the content of seed protein in pulses crop at genus level. Use of these markers also offers an efficient system for the assessment of genetic diversity within minicore set of pigeonpea.

Mungbean and urdbean suffer from paucity of genetic markers associated with MYMV disease. As an alternative option RGHs were tested for transferability in 13 and 12 genotypes of mungbean and urdbean, respectively. Fiftyfive RGH markers from cowpea, chickpea and Medicago exhibited a transferability of 58.2%, which collectively yielded 51 alleles with an average of 1.59 alleles per locus. PIC of individual loci ranged from 0.19 to 0.64. Phylogenetic tree formed two different clusters of mungbean and urdbean with six sub clusters. Two putative markers identified and high level of transferability indicated its importance for marker-assisted breeding.

With a view to study the effects of irrigation scheduling on the water use efficiency and physiological response and molecular basis of maize hybrids of different maturity groups, a field experiment was conducted at Water Management Research Center (WMRC), Belvatagi, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India during 2010-2011 rabi season in Malaprabha Command Area'. The experiment was laid out in split plot design with three replications. The main plot comprised four irrigation levels (0.4. 0.6 and 0.8 irrigation water/cumulative pan evaporation (IW/CPE) ratio and irrigation at critical growth stages of maize) and subplots were three maize hybrids [PEEHM-5 (extra early), PEHM-2 (early) and 900 M gold (full season)] were tested. The results reveal that significantly higher grain yield (P<0.05) was at 0.8 IW/CPE ratio followed by irrigation at critical growth sages of maize. Among the maize genotypes tested, full season 900 M Gold recorded significantly greater grain yield (84.61 q ha-1) over PEHM-2 (early) and PEEHM-5 (extra-early). The moisture stress due to 0.4 IW/CPE ratio prolonged the days which reached 50% anthesis and 50% silking thus widening the anthesis-silking interval. Significant positive correlations (P<0.05) of maize grain yield with 100 seed weight (r=0.81), cob length (r=0.83), harvest index (r=0.82) and water-use efficiency (WUE; r=0.61) were found. The RWC decreased significantly (P<0.05) from 82.53 to 75.24% with increasing moisture stress on account of variations in the availability of soil moisture in the crop root zone. WUE was significantly low (P<0.05) in 0.8 IW/CPE ratio, despite providing more amount of water which could be attributed to a greater use of water with relatively lesser increase in yield. The present investigation shows that providing four irrigations at critical growth stages of maize hybrids followed by either three or five irrigations seem to have higher WUE. This approach could save water up to 29% with slight reduction of grain yield by 12% over providing full irrigation. Molecular analysis of three hybrids revealed the possibility of introgressing the yield enhancing traits from full season hybrid into early and extra-early hybrids, the latter clustered distinctly with each other. This strategy besides saving water helps tail-end farmers in choosing additional crop for double cropping in the command areas.

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Diversity in devices, lack of systematic device testing strategy has always led to open questions in the customer