Genotypic variation of nitrogen use efficiency in Indian mustard

Abstract

This experiment was conducted to investigate the variation of nitrogen efficiency (NE), nitrogen uptake efficiency (UE), physiological nitrogen use efficiency (PUE) among Indian mustard genotypes, grown under N-insufficient and N-sufficient conditions. Nitrogen efficiency varied from 52.7 to 92.8. Seed yield varied from 1.14 t ha^-1 to 3.21 t ha^-1 under N-insufficient condition, while 2.14 t ha^-1-3.33 t ha^-1 under N-sufficient condition. Physiological basis of this difference was explained in terms of nitrogen uptake efficiency and physiological nitrogen use efficiency, and their relationship with the growth and yield characteristics. While nitrogen uptake efficiency was positively correlated with plant biomass (0.793^∗∗), leaf area index (0.664^∗), and leaf nitrogen content (0.783^∗∗), physiological nitrogen use efficiency is positively correlated with photosynthetic rate (0.689^∗∗) and yield (0.814^∗∗). This study suggests that genotype having high nitrogen uptake efficiency and high physiological nitrogen use efficiency might help in reducing the nitrogen load on soil without any penalty on the yield. Nitrogen efficient crop plants may help in reducing environmental contamination of nitrate without any penalty on seed yield.