ABSTRACT
Summary Cicer milkvetch (Astragalus cicer L.), a nonbloating legume, has many of the attributes of a desirable forage species. Relatively poor seedling vigor, however, has limited its use. Our experiment's objectives were to determine the variations among selected progenies of cicer milkvetch in seedling vigor traits in the laboratory and in seedling emergence in the field and to discover whether the seedling traits could be used to predict seedling emergence in the field. A total of 112 polycross progenies from 3 selected populations were evaluated for seedling vigor traits at temperatures of 15°/25° C in the laboratory and for seedling emergence at 2 field locations. In all instances the experimental design was a ran-domized complete block with 4 replications. Differences among populations were relatively small for all seedling traits. Mean radicle length, hypocotyl length, hypocotyl diameter, total seedling length, and seedling weight ranged from 36 to 38 mm, 25 to 26 mm, 1.19 to 1.27 mm, 61 to 64 mm, and 3.29 to 3.88 mg, respectively. Within populations the progenies differed significantly (0.05 level) for all seedling traits. Progenies within populations also differed significantly for seedling emergence at both locations. Seedling emergence at one location was about twice that at the other location. Of the 30 possible correlation coefficients between the five seedling vigor traits mentioned above and seedling emergence at the two locations for three populations, only 4 were significant, and they were of low predictive value. Therefore, we concluded that seedling traits as developed in a laboratory environment at temperatures of 15°/25° C are not suitable for predicting seedling emergence of cicer milkvetch under field conditions.
