GENETIC VARIABILITY ANALYSIS IN OKRA USING MORPHOLOGICAL MARKER

Abstract

The experiment was conducted during the period from April to September 2011 at the Horticulture Research Centre, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, Gazipur. Thirty three okra lines and BARI Dherosh 1 were used as check. The single factor experiment was laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. It was revealed that the maximum number of fruit (40.33) was found in AE 050, whereas minimum (21.00) in AE 013 and the highest yield (23.85 t/ha) was in AE 018, whereas lowest (9.32 t/ha) in AE 003. For all traits, phenotypic variance was higher than the genotypic variance with high heritability and high genetic advance in percentage of mean. Data revealed that significant positive association for yield ha -1 of okra lines with number of internodes/plant (0.390), plant height (0.655), individual fruit weight (0.629), length of fruit (0.369), diameter of fruit (0.389), number of fruits/plant (0.824) and yield/plant (0.824), while the significant negative association for yield ha -1 (-0.319) and non significant negative association with number of branches/plant (-0.007). Path analysis revealed that all the parameters showed positive direct effect except days to 1 st flowering and number of branches/plant on yield ha -1 . For cluster analysis, four clusters were formed, whereas Cluster II had the highest intra-cluster distance (0.4809) and the highest inter-cluster distance (13.288) was between cluster I and III. On the basis of performance study, considering all the parameters AE 018, AE 050 and AE 212 were selected superior in higher yield and tolerant to YVMV infestation.