Correlations among the Shoot Characters in Assam Hybrid of Tea Plant

Abstract

The purpose of the experiment reported here was to furnish the information of the correlations among the shoot characters in Assam hybrid of tea plant.Twenty-one clones under clonal selection were used, and the shoot characters chosen in this experiment were number and length of whole shoot, number of leaves, weight and length of plucked shoot, internode length and internode diameter.Phenotypic and genotypic correlation coefficients for all possible combinations were calculated from the variance and covariance components.The phenotypic and genotypic correlation coefficients agreed very closely in each instance.High positive correlation coefficients were obtained among lengths of whole shoot and plucked shoot, and internode length. Other positive correlations worthy of some attentions were those between length of whole shoot and number of leaves, weight of plucked shoot and length of whole shoot, weight and internode diameter of plucked shoot, respectively.The correlation coefficients of each shoot character among three plucking seasons were highly significant except for number of leaves.It may be concluded from the results of these investigations that the measurements of all shoot characters in each plucking season are not always necessary.Furthermore, path coefficient analyses of the five characters influencing weight of plucked shoot were conducted by means of analyzing the correlation into direct and indirect components. As a result, it became evident that length of whole shoot, internode diameter and length of plucked shoot were main factors that exerted great influence both directly and indirectly upon the weight of plucking season, and internode diameter and internode length were also main factors in the second plucking season.