EVALUATION OF SOME EGYPTIAN COTTON GENOTYPES UNDER DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Thirty-six new cotton strains descending from fourteen Egyptian cotton crosses were included in trial A, and sixteen strains descending from ten crosses were included in trial B in 2009 season using three promising crosses and the commercial variety Giza 86 as checks. All the genotypes belong to Gosssypium barbadense L. Trial A was conducted at Kafr El-Sheikh, whereas trial B was out lined at five locations (Kafr El-Sheikh, El-Dakahleia, El-Monofeia, El-Sharkeia and El-Gharbeia) in Lower Egypt. The results of trial A showed that most of the genotypes belong to crosses significantly surpassed the check variety Giza 86 in both yield and its components. While, trial B showed that the seven strains were superiority across five locations. High heritability estimates in broad sense were recorded for most studied traits in trials A & B indicating that phenotypic selection for these strains could be highly effective. The present study aimed to evaluate some of Egyptian cotton genotypes using stability statistic analysis which were applied to seed cotton yield, lint cotton yield, boll weight and earliness index. The studied traits showed highly significant mean squares for, genotypes, environments and genotype x environment. The genotypes no. 10, 11, 13, 16 and the two promising crosses 10229 x Giza 86 and Giza 89 x Giza 86 observed average level of stability and surpassed mean performance for seed and lint cotton yield. The genotypes no. 10, 12, 13, 15 and the two promising crosses 10229 x Giza 86 and Giza 75 x Sea behaved the same way for boll weight and the genotypes no. 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 14, 15 and the three promising crosses 10229 x Giza 86, Giza 75 x Sea and Giza 89 x Giza 86 for earliness index. Therefore, these genotypes may be recommended to be released as a commercial stable high yielding cultivar and / or incorporated to be as a breeding stock in any future breeding program aiming for producing stable high yielding lines for seed cotton yields, lint cotton yield, boll weight and earliness index.