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Online ISSN : 2349-8080 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorinchiefijcrbp@gmail.com |
Estimates of genetic parameters of agro-morphological characteristics are essential for the genetic improvement of crop plants. The purpose of this study was to estimate the variance components, the heritability, genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation as well as genetic and phenotypic correlation coefficients of different agro-morphological traits in eggplant, Solanum melongena. The plant material was composed of: a) 8 accessions of S. melongena, b) 8 accessions of 6 wild relatives and c) 36 interspecific F1 hybrid progenies. Fifteen agro-morphological traits were measured on five plants of each parental accession and each F1 progeny, arranged in the fields in a randomized complete block design. For all the traits studied, phenotypic coefficients of variation were higher than genotypic coefficients of variation. However, the gaps between these phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation were small, indicating a weak influence of the environment on the traits. Values of the narrow sense heritability were high and suggest strong contributions of genes with additive effects in the expression of the traits. Genotypic and phenotypic correlation coefficients between vegetative growth characteristics and fruit characteristics were low to moderate. Selection pressures can therefore be applied to yield related traits without significantly affecting vegetative growth traits, and vice versa. These estimates of the genetic parameters show that genetic improvement of eggplant can be achieved effectively by mass selection on the basis of phenotypic values of agro-morphological characteristics.
