Characterization and Evaluation of Onion Allium cepa L Germplasm at Leh trans Himalaya India

Abstract

Onion is an important food crop grown and consumed almost all over the world and often fall short for huge Indian army deployed in the Leh- Ladakh region. The local production of onion which could complement the shortage is almost negligible due to lack of appropriate varieties which perform well in extreme climatic conditions and limited growing season prevailing in the region. In the present work, different onion genotypes were evaluated on basis of quantitative and qualitative traits, mineral content and postharvest storage at high altitude. Experiment were also conducted to compare sets and seedling as plating material of onion for better performance and yield in the extreme climatic conditions of Leh Ladakh. The genotype IC-0512324 showed highest average bulb weight, bulb yield, dry matter content and total soluble solids. Genotype IC- 0588677 showed less number of deformed bulbs, whereas genotype IC-0374724 was best with respect to less number of days taken to maturity. Multivariate analysis was used to classify the 26 onion accessions. All accessions were grouped into two different clusters and four sub clusters. Principle component analysis, extracted three PC s and newlinecontributing 95.61 percentage of variation out of which first PC1 explaining 77.52 % variability, PC2 10.72 % and PC3 7.38 % variability of the variance among 26 accessions. The high diversity found in the accessions shows great potential for improving qualitative as well as quantitative traits in onion. newlineThere was significant effect of planting material and genotypes on all the studied parameters in an experiment conducted to test sets and seedling as planting material. Wall Brown genotype showed highest plant survival, chlorophyll content, days to maturity, polar diameter, equatorial diameter, average bulb weight and bulb yield when grown through sets among all the genotypes. The highest plant height and number of leaves, leaf area, were obtained in the genotype Brown Spanish.