STUDY OF THE CORRELATIONS BETWEEN SOME MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS IN A COLLECTION OF AUTUMN OAT (AVENA SATIVA L.) GENOTYPES

Abstract

The aim of the research was to study the correlations between the main morphological characters pursued in the autumn oat breeding programs. The study was conducted over three years, in field conditions, the observations being made by bioemetric measurements on the plant height and the morphological components of the plant productivity. The biological material consisted of 73 winter oats genotypes, the experimental data being collected from all genotypes. The interpretation of the results was made by establishing the correlation coefficients, the analysis of the variance of multiple regression and establishing the “path” coefficients. The studies show that the height of the plant is in a linear relationship with the other characters except for the length of the panicle and the number of grains in the panicle. The number of fertile tillers does not correlate with the components of the panicle. The number and weight grains in the main panicle, the weight of the grains in the secondary panicles and the weight of the grains per plant are in a very significant positive correlation. Approximately 81.04% of the main panicle production is due to the number of grains in the panicle. The analysis of variance for multiple regressions shows that 92.65% of the variability of grain weight per plant is due to the influence of other characters. The highest contributions are presented by the weight of the grains in the secondary panicles (44.45%), the weight of the grains in the main panicle (42.27%), the number of grains in the main panicle (9.26%). According to the “path” coefficients, the weight of the grains on the plant is influenced by the weight of the grains in the secondary panicles (P = 0.743) and the weight of the grains in the main panicle (P = 0.416), but very little by the other characters.