Vol. 9, Issue 8 (2020)

Author(s):
Yamanura and R Mohan Kumar

Abstract:
An investigation on genetic variability of castor through multivariate analysis was undertaken at All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Castor, Zonal Agricultural research Station, University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru during kharif 2019-20. This study involved 33 genotypes [20 hybrids, 12 parents and a check (ICH-66)]. The outcome of the study indicated the existence of high degree of variability among the study materials. High heritability coupled with high combining ability were noticed for the characters such as days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height to primary raceme, nodes counts to primary spike, volume and seed weight, effective spikes numbers and seed yield. Further, correlation analysis indicated the strong and positive association between seed yield and oil content (0.717**), hundred seed weight (0.679**), hundred volume weight (0.527**), number of capsules per primary raceme (0.443**), effective length of primary spike (0.245**), total length of primary spike (0.216*) and number of effective spikes per plant (0.012). The residual effect was 0.73 and 0.63 at phenotypic and genotypic level, respectively in the present investigation. Thus, present study also indicated the influence of some extraneous traits associated with seed yield in castor in addition to yield attributing factors indicated in this study.