Vol. 12, Issue 4 (2023)

Author(s):
Poonam Rajpoot, Manoj Kumar Tripathi, RS Solanki, Sushma Tiwari, Niraj Tripathi, Shailja Chauhan, RK Pandya and Vikas Khandelwal

Abstract:
Pearl millet is an imperative cereal crop, where it is a staple food for millions of people in the world. Development of higher yielding cultivars/hybrids is need of day. A set of seventy-five germplasm lines were evaluated in Randomized Complete Block Design during Kharif 2021 to study different genetic parameters and associations among different yield accrediting characters. Analysis of variance indicated significant differences for all investigated traits in the experimental materials. The values of PCV were higher than GCV but in a narrow range indicating the least influence of environment on the expression of traits. Estimates of high heritability along with higher genetic advance as a percentage of mean were observed for grain yield plant^-1, test weight, harvest index, numbers of productive tillers plant^-1 and biological yield indicating the presence of additive gene action signifying for improvement of this trait by applying diverse selection methods. Correlation and path analysis studies revealed that the harvest index, biological yield, and numbers of productive tillers plant^-1 could be considered good selection indices for selecting genotypes for yield improvement. The percent contribution of individual characters toward the total divergence was found high for biological yield (g). Based on D² values, 75 genotypes were grouped into five clusters. Intra cluster distance ranged from 0.00 to 67.34. The highest inter-cluster divergence was documented between genotypes of clusters III and V.