Genetic variability in Acacia nilotica provenance selections of central India

Abstract

In the context of climate change and sustainable agriculture, agroforestry systems play an important role by providing scope for maximizing land use system. In arid and semi-arid regions of the country, where there is moisture and soil quality content, the choice of species which are well adopted to these regions are essential. Acacia nilotica, because of its diverse utility has an important status in the rural farming under different agroforestry systems. Elite planting material is the basic requirement for promoting agroforestry species. Assessing the variation within and among the provenance selections for different traits will help selection of genotypes for different use in agroforestry system. The growth traits which are important for fuel, timber and fodder production viz., tree height and the canopy diameter, had significant difference among the provenance selections. The mean tree height was 5.72 m with a range of 4.98m (MP-Prov-7) - 6.75m (MP-Prov-8) and the mean canopy diameter was 5.44m with a minimum of 4.58m (MP-Prov-7) and a maximum of 7.41(TN-Prov-1) and showed medium to high heritability indicating that selection for genotypes based on these traits will lead to improved genotypes

Keywords

• acacia nilotica
• fodder and fuel
• genetic variation
• diversity
• germplasm