EVALUATION OF GERMPLASM OF CUMINUM CYMINUM LINN. UNDER SUBTROPICS OF JAMMU, INDIAAmreena Akhter, Lalit Mohan Gupta, Meenakshi Gupta, Humaira Jan, Rehana Akbar and Bilkees AyoobAbstract Cuminum cyminum (Cumin) is valuable seed spice with diverse usage in cosmetic, medicinal and food industries. An experiment was conducted to evaluate performance of different cumin genotypes for their growth and yield parameters under Jammu subtropics so as to get information on variability present in them and to identify superior genotype(s) for subtropics of Jammu region. Although moderate seed germination percentage (48.60-74.37%) was recorded, but survival percentage of crop was very poor (5.67% -12.33%) resulting in low seed yield plant-1(0.21g -0.98g) which ultimately lead to low yield per hectare (7.42kg-77.42kg). All characters and combinations were positively and significantly correlated with each other except for trait pairs number of umbels plant-1 vs. plant height, 1000 seed weight vs. plant height and 1000 seed weight vs. number of umbels plant-1 which were positively correlated but non-significant. Seed yield plant-1 was significantly and positively correlated with number of seeds plant-1 (r = 0.923, p = 0.01), number of seeds umbel-1 (r = 0.842, p = 0.01) survival percentage (r = 0.825, p = 0.01), number of umbels plant-1 (r = 0.787, p = 0.01), germination percentage (r = 0.750, p = 0.01) and number of branches plant-1 (r = 0.710, p = 0.01). Higher seed yield plant-1 was observed in genotype GC-4 (0.98g) compared to other genotypes. The overall performance of different genotypes was poor, however, the genotype GC-4 performed better than others. Due to poor survival, growth and yield performance, cumin crop is not commercially suitable for Jammu subtropics. |