MUTATIONAL BIOASSAY AND AMELIORATIVE ACTION OF CAFFEINE FOR INDUCTION OF EARLY MATURING MUTANT IN NIGELLA SATIVA L.

Abstract

With the unfolding of mutational studies, chemical mutagenesis is widely used for developing induced mutants in plants. The efficiency of this technique using one of potent chemical mutagen i.e., Caffeine is accounted in the present piece of work. The existing germplasm (seeds) of Nigella sativa was mutagenised with 0.10%, 0.25% and 0.50% dose of caffeine to develop a viable mutant at M2 generation level. Different qualitative and quantitative traits of mutant plant was screened time to time and contrasted with control (untreated/normal plant). There observed a considerable deviation in phenotypic characters like shape of vegetative leaf, number of petals, capsule and seed size. Wide array of macro- mutations altered the overall morphology of plant which became matured 18 days earlier than its wild type; thereby induced an elite line called “Early Maturing Mutant” at 0.25% dose of caffeine. Thus, on assaying different morphological mutations induced, it is concluded that Caffeine at its optimal dose (0.25%) is ameliorative for medicinal herb- Nigella sativa. Moreover, the same concentration not disturbed the cell cycle of mutant as studied through cytology (Meiosis I and II) of PMC.