Morphological characteristics of ICRISAT-bred pearl millet hybrid seed parents1

ICRISAT had developed and disseminated a large number of male-sterile lines (A-lines) and their maintainers (B-lines) over the years, which had been characterized for key agronomic traits and downy mildew resistance in the years they were developed, but not in the common environments. Ninety-nine of these A-lines and their counterpart B-lines developed during 1981–2004 were evaluated for 26 morphological traits using DUS descriptors in two seasons (postrainy season 2005 and rainy season 2005) at ICRISAT, Patancheru, India. The purpose of this morphological characterization was to present comparative descriptions of these lines to facilitate their selection and use by hybrid programs of NARS and the private sector, and also to document them as a prior art to protect from any possible infringement. Parentage of these lines revealed diverse germplasm base as 52 of these had some component of germplasm and/or composite in their parentage, while remaining 47 lines were developed from crosses between elite parental lines. This resulted in large diversity among the lines observed for all the traits. Some A/B pairs showed significant differences between them for some of the quantitative characters in the same season as well as in different seasons. Similarly Aand B-lines also had differences for some qualitative traits within the same season and across the seasons. Differences were also observed in B-lines across the replications as well as within the lines for some qualitative traits. This paper, apart from characterizing the morphological characters, discusses the probable reasons for variability in expression of characters with respect to A/B pairs in the same season or different seasons, and also within-line and across replications, and its implications for Intellectual Property Rights protection.