Estimation of Genetic Variability for Yield and Its Component Traits among Some Selected Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) Accessions

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted to evaluate nineteen accessions of sorghum grown for two cropping seasons of 2015 and 2016 at the Teaching and Research Farm of Department of Crop Production, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger state to characterize 19 sorghum accessions base on their morph-agronomic traits and determine yield with its component traits. A randomized complete block design with three replications was used for the experiment. Data were collected on plant height, number of leaves/plant, leaf length, leaf width, number of nodes, days to 50 % flowering, days to 95 % maturity, panicle length, panicle width, grain weight and 1000 seed weight and were subjected to individual and combined analysis of variance (ANOVA). Based on the finding of this study, highly significant differences among accessions were found except for leaf width and number of nodes for all characters. Phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) was higher than genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) and high phenotypic and genotypic variability were observed between the nineteen sorghum accessions. The highest value of heritability was observed in grain weight (99 %), and the most high yielding accession was AKV11 (Kaura) with grain weight of 614g in 2015 and 514.33g in 2016. High genetic advance was recorded in grain yield and panicle length. Combined correlation coefficient for the two cropping seasons revealed that the yield components exhibited varying trends of correlation relationship between themselves, The most outstanding performance accessions for grain weight are: AKV11 (Kaura), AKV9 (Shawimpe) and AKV14 (Farafara), which could be used for Sorghum improvement programmed and recommend for farmers in the Southern Guinea Zones of Nigeria.