HERITABILITY AND GENETIC POTENTIAL OF UPLAND COTTON GENOTYPES FOR MORPHO-YIELD TRAITS

Abstract

The studies determining genetic variability and heritability in upland cotton were carried out in a randomized complete block (RCB) design with three replications during 2008 at the NWFP Agricultural University Peshawar, Pakistan. The breeding material comprised of eight Gossypium hirsutum cultivars viz., SLH-284, CIM-446, CIM-473, CIM-496, CIM-499, CIM-506, CIM-554 and CIM-707. The cultivars manifested highly significant differences (p<0.01) for plant height, monopodia and sympodia plant-1 and seed cotton yield plant-1, while merely significant (p<0.05) for days to first flowering and boll weight. However, first internode length showed non-significant variation among the cultivars. The cultivar CIM-506 was found top promising by having maximum seed cotton yield plant-1, sympodia plant-1, short stature plants, and medium early maturity and boll weight as compared to other seven cultivars. The cultivars CIM-707 and CIM-554 also showed comparable yield contributing traits and seed cotton yield. The heritability broad sense (bs) was high for the traits days to first flowering (0.96), plant height (0.95), monopodia plant-1 (0.88), sympodia plant-1 (0.89), boll weight (0.97) and seed cotton yield plant-1 (0.91) while first internode length (0.36) revealed low heritability. For majority of the traits the genetic variances were also greater than environmental variances and were found high heritable. Therefore, the said breeding material has the room for further improvement of morpho-yield traits and can safely be used in future breeding programmes.