Variabilidade genética em famílias de meios-irmãos de milheto pérola semeadas na época da seca

Abstract

: In Brazil, there is a high demand for pearl millet cultivars for grain and biomass production, because the reduced number of cultivars offered in the marked. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the genetic variability for the grain and biomass production traits, as well as others agronomic traits, on a population of pearl millet submitted to a family selection, at the dry season. For this, families obtained form a bulk created by a natural crossing of the african genotypes HKP, Guerguera and Souna III were used for selection. It was phenotypically selected the 10% of the best plants based on producing tillers, panicle length and biomass production, resulting in 121 families, which were then sown on march 2004, at the Experimental Field of Crop Science Department – UFRRJ, in a triplet lattice 11 X 11. Among the traits evaluated, those with higher chances for selection were panicle dry matter, with a heritability at the mean level (h2 m) of 0,379 and genetic progress for the family selection, in a mean percentage ( PGSEF%) of 10,47; stover dry matter (with a h2 m = 0,324 and a PGSEF% = 11,35); total biomass dry matter (with a h2 m = 0,329 and a PGSEF% = 9,43); panicle mean length (with a h2 m = 0,569 and a PGSEF% = 8,00); and grain production (with a h2 m = 0,380 and a PGSEF% = 10,46).