Study of character association analysis in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract

Analysis of data on 10 characters on 61 wheat genotypes. The characters days to maturity, Number of grains per spike, grain weight per spike and 1000 grain weight showed significant and positive association with grain yield. Path coefficient analysis revealed that
days to 50% flowering, no. of tillers per plant, days to maturity and 1000 grain weight per ear were the important yield contributing characters. Other characters have indirect influence on yield through rest correlated characters. Correlation coefficient which provides the nature and degree of association of various pairs of characters is considered useful for making effective selection that practiced for the improvement of yield. Path coefficient indicates the relative importance of each component (Write, 1921, Dewey and
Lul, 1959, Tyagi et al., 1988). Path coefficient analysis is an efficient statistical technique specially designed to quantify the inter relationship of different components and their direct and indirect effects on seed yield. Through this technique yield contributing
characters can be ranked and specific traits producing a given correlation can be considered accordingly (Rao et al., 1991).