Vol. 11, Issue 7 (2022)

Author(s):
Narla Abigna

Abstract:
The present study was carried out with 21 different genotypes of Indian mustard including two checks. For the fourteen traits observed, analysis of variance was found highly significant for all characters excluding number of primary branches per plant, length of siliqua and test weight implying high inherent variation was present amongst the genotypes. PCV was greater than GCV for all the traits indicating that there is an influence of environment over the genotypes and thus selection based on these values could be misleading. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance was observed for all traits expect days to 50% flowering and days to maturity. For both genotypic and phenotypic correlation, seed yield per plant was found to be highly and significantly correlated with plant height, number of primary branches per plant, number of secondary branches per plant, number of siliquae per plant and biological yield per plant, positively and significantly correlated with number of siliquae on main raceme and harvest index suggesting that these characters should be given more importance while selection for improvement in seed yield. The path coefficient analysis showed nine direct effects on seed yield per plant viz., biological yield per plant followed by harvest index, number of siliquae per plant, days to 50% flowering, number of primary branches per plant, length of main raceme, length of siliqua, number of siliquae on main raceme and number of seeds per siliquae revealing true relationship between them and that direct selection for these traits would be rewarding for yield improvement. Based on the MahalanobisD2 statistics, the genotypes were grouped into 5 clusters. Most of the genotypes were grouped into cluster I (14 genotypes), while clusters IV and V were solitary. The intra-cluster divergence ranged from 0.0 to 39.01 while clusters IV and V showed maximum inter-cluster distance (111.45) and the lowest inter-cluster distance was noticed between cluster I and cluster II (47.96). This implies that clusters IV and V are highly divergent and hybridization between genotypes of these two clusters would show high heterosis.