Thermal requirement of indian mustard (Brassica juncea) at different phonological stages under late sown condition

Indian mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern & Coss.] is a long day plant, which requires fairly cool climatic condition during growth and development for obtaining better seed yield. Various workers have correlated crop growth and development with energy requirement parameters, such as growing degree days (GDD), photo-thermal unit (PTU), helios thermal unit (HTU), photo-thermal index (PTI) and heat use efficiency (HUE). Therefore, GDD requirement for different phenological stages of 22 newly developed Indian mustard varieties was studies during winter (rabi) seasons of 2009–10 and 2010–11 at student instructional farm of C.S. Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur, (Utter Pradesh). Study revealed that RH-8814, NRCDR-02 and BPR-549-9 recorded higher GDD (1703.0, 1662.9 and 1648.0), PTU (19129.8, 18694.2 and 18379.8), HTU (11397.7, 11072.2 and 10876.0), PTI (13.25, 13.14 and 13.08) and HUE (4.11, 3.84 and 3.71) at physiological maturity, while higher HUE was recorded (9.62, 8.99 and 8.91 kg ha(−1) degrees-day) at days after sowing (DAS) to 50 % flowering. On the basis of study mustard genotypes RH-8814, NRCDR-02 and BPR-549-9 were identified as most heat-tolerant, as they maintained higher values for energy related parameters. Seed yield was highly positively correlated with GDD (r = 0.61, 0.65 and 0.75), PTU (r = 0.66, 0.64 and 0.74), HTU(r = 0.79, 0.68 and 0.73) at the above these three phenological stages, while negatively correlated with PTI at anthesis and at maturity. Hence, these parents could be used in crossing programme for achieving further improvement.