Identification of new fertility restorers for development of early maturing pigeonpea hybrids

The paper reports the identification of two early maturing fertility restorers viz.ICPR 2433 and ICPR 2438. The fertility restoration was found to be under the control of two duplicate dominant genes. Multi-location evaluation of the hybrids involving these restorers revealed that the fertility restoration of the hybrids was stable across seven environments. On average, the two hybrids (ICPH 2348 and ICPH 2433) out-yielded the control ICPL 88039 by a margin of over 100%. These results showed that with targeted breeding and selection of fertility restorers it would be possible to breed early maturing hybrids in the near future