The present study was carried out during two successive seasons 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 to study the genetic variability of some growth and flowering traits of Chrysanthemum morifolium cv. Maghi plants caused by Sodium Azide (SA) treatments. Shoot apical cuttings were dipped in the SA solution, at 0.0, 0.12 and 0.18% for two different soaking times (6 and 12h). The cutting survivability was immensely hampered (P˃0.05) due to the SA concentrations and the time of the treatment.
In both seasons, there were remarkable variations in the range of all investigated traits due to the SA treatments such as plant height, number of branches and flower heads/plant, Flower head diameters and their fresh and dry weight. However, number of days till full blooming showed the lowest variation. All SA-treated plants had higher PCV and GCV than the control ones for all investigated traits except days to full bloom and flower head fresh weights. Moreover, The PCV was always higher than GCV for all the characters. Almost all traits had higher heritability. However, there were huge differences in heritability values between the control and SA-treated plants. Presence of narrow gap between phenotypic coefficient of variation and genotypic coefficient of variation for many the characters under the study suggested that expression of these traits studied showed low environmental influence, which provide ample scope for selection of superior and desired mutants.