GENETIC VARIATION AMONG FORAGE PEARL MILLET GENOTYPES FOR FODDER YIELD AND ITS COMPONENT TRAITS GENOTYPES FOR FODDER YIELD AND ITS COMPONENT TRAITS UNDER RAINFED CONDITIONS OF GUJ UNDER RAINFED CONDITIONS OF GUJARAT

Abstract

To assess the genetic variability and character association among 17 genotypes of forage pearl millet were studied for seven quantitative traits at Jamnagar and Dhari centre under rainfed condition of Gujarat during rainy season of 2014. PCV and GCV estimates were found to be high to moderate for harvest index (48.65%, 45.48%), grain yield per plant (43.92%, 36.59%), dry fodder yield per plant (21.77%, 15.32%) and green fodder yield per plant (18.09%, 11.35%) which suggests that there is enough scope for selection based on these characters. The high heritability coupled with high to moderate genetic advance expressed as percentage of mean was observed for harvest index (87.40%, 87.58%), grain yield per plant (69.40%, 62.80%), dry fodder yield per plant (50.10%, 22.20%), days to 50% flowering (65.30%, 14.52%) and plant height (50.60%, 10.17%) which showed that these traits were controlled by additive gene effects and phenotypic selection were for these traits were likely to be effective. Correlation analysis revealed that dry fodder yield per plant (0.961, 0.711), plant height (0.134, 0.30) and days to 50% flowering (0.121, 0.041) had positive correlation with green fodder yield per plant. Hence, these characters would be more effective for boosting green fodder yield performance of pearl millet genotypes.