ESTIMATION OF SOME GENETIC PARAMETERS FOR YIELD AND YIELD COMPONENTS IN KENAF (HIBISCUS CANNABINUS L.)

Abstract

Two field experiments were carried out at EI-Gemmiza Agric. Res. Station, Gharbia Govemorate, A.R.C., Egypt during the two successive seasons, 2005 and 2006, to study the variability and covariability for green stalk weight, fiber weight and their related characters through evaluation of fourteen kenaf genotypes in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The collected data indicated that, local strain 105/2 gave the highest mean for each of green stalk yield per fed, fiber yield per fed, green stalk weight per plant, plant height, technical stem length, fiber length, fiber weight per plant, fiber percentage, fruiting zone length, stem diameter and seed weight per plant. While, the maximum seed yield per fed was recorded by S.96/20. Mean squares due to genotypes were highly significant for all characters, revealing the variability existed among these genotypes, resulted in increasing the chance to select high yielding potential genotypes for all characters. The genotype x year variance (029y) was less than the genotypic variance (egg) for all characters except fiber percentage, indicating that most of variability in most studied characters was mainly controlled by genetic factors with less influence by environmental factors. This mean that improvement of these traits could be achieved by direct selection. The narrow range between phenotypic (PCV) and genotypic (GCV) coefficient of variability gave almost similar values, for plant height and technical stem length. Reflected the importance of selection for these traits (plant height and technical stem length), which also gave high heritability estimates. Phenotypic (re) and genotypic (re) correlation coefficients concluded that plant height, technical stem length, fiber length, green weight per plant and fiber percentage are the major components contributing to fiber weight per plant. Therefore, selection for these traits will improve the fiber yield (weight) in kenaf.