STUDIES ON VARIABILITY, CORRELATION AND PATH ANALYSIS IN PEARL MILLET
ABHAY BIKASH, I. S. YADAV AND R. K. ARYA
Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding,
CCSHAU, Hisar-125004(Haryana), India
(Email:iswaryadav@gmail.com)
(Received: 13 December 2013; Accepted: 27 December 2013)
SUMMARY
A set of 30 elite hybrids of pearlmillet developed at CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar were used in the present study. The purpose of the present investigation was the estimation of variability and association between the grain yield and its component characters and to assess the direct and indirect effects of various characters on grain yield. The results on correlation in the present study revealed that in general, the genotypic correlation coefficient were higher than their corresponding phenotypic correlations. The grain yield was significantly and positively correlated with harvest index, ear girth, effective tillers, dry fodder and biological yield in all the four environments. The path coefficient analysis suggested the importance of biological yield as it has direct positive effect and indirect effect on grain yield in all four environments. So the selection for higher yield will be useful if it is based on characters such as biological yield, plant height, dry fodder yield, effective tillers and harvest index as these have significant correlation on grain yield.
Key words: Variability, correlation coefficient, path analysis, pearl millet