CHARACTERIZATION AND GENETIC DIVERSITY ANALYSIS OF YIELD AND YIELD CONTRIBUTING PARAMETERS IN BRINJAL GENOTYPES

Abstract

The field experiment was carried out to assess the genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance, correlation, path co-efficient and genetic diversity for fifteen yield and yield contributing traits in twenty brinjal genotypes. The study was conducted at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka from November 2021 to June 2022 using a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. In this experiment, the existing genotypes showed significant differences for all characters. The phenotypic co-efficient of variation (PCV) was higher than the genotypic co-efficient of variation (GCV) for all the studied characters. The highest PCV (68.60) and GCV (59.50) were found in percent of brinjal shoot and fruit borer infestation. High heritability associated with high genetic advance and high genetic advance in percentage of mean was found in plant height, individual fruit weight and percent of brinjal shoot and fruit borer infestation, which suggested that phenotype-based selection would be effective. Character association assessments revealed that fruit yield per plant had the most significant positive correlation with days to last harvesting (r g xiii

= 0.495, r p = 0.454), number of secondary branches per plant (r g =0.356, r p =0.315), leaf blade length (r g = 0.714, r p = 0.462), leaf blade width (r g = 0.674, r p = 0.498) and number of fruits per plant (r g = 0.798, r p = 0.787) in both genotypic and phenotypic levels. Path analysis found that the number of fruits per plant (1.421) had the most positive and direct influence on yield per plant. Twenty brinjal genotypes were classified into five groups using principal component analysis, D cluster analysis. Clusters I, II, III, IV, and V each have three, three, four, six, and four genotypes. Cluster III had the highest intra-cluster distance (1.918), whereas the highest inter-cluster distance (95.69) was found between clusters II and V. Mean performance of cluster revealed the highest number of fruits per plant (13.45) and yield per plant (0.71) found in cluster IV. Considering cluster distances, character contribution to divergence, magnitude of cluster mean performance and genetic parameters, the genotypes G10 and G20 from cluster III, G11 and G8 from cluster II, and G5 along with G18 from cluster IV might be used in future breeding programs.