Morphological characterization and genetic diversity analysis of yield and yield contributing parameters in brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) genotypes

Abstract

Abstract A field experiment was carried out to assess the significance of variance, heritability, genetic advance, correlation, path coefficient and genetic diversity for fifteen yield and yield contributing features in twenty brinjal genotypes. The study was conducted at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University in Dhaka from November 2021 to June 2022 using a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. In this experiment, the existing genotypes showed significant differences for all characters. The phenotypic co-efficient of variation was higher than the genotypic co-efficient of variation for all the characters. Highest PCV (68.60) was found in percent of BSFB infestation and GCV (59.50) was found in percent of BSFB infestation. High heritability associated with high genetic advance and high genetic advance in percentage of mean was found in plant height, individual fruit weight and percent of BSFB infestation, which indicated selection on the basis of phenotype would be effective. Assessments of character association indicating that fruit yield per plant had highest significant positive correlation with days of last harvesting (rg = 0.495, rp = 0.454), number of secondary branches per plant (rg=0.356, rp=0.315), leaf blade length (rg = 0.714, rp = 0.462), leaf blade width (rg = 0.674, rp = 0.498) and number of fruits per plant (rg= 0.798, rp= 0.787) in both genotypic and phenotypic level. Path analysis revealed that the number of flowers per plant (1.421) had the maximum positive and direct effect on yield per plant. According to PCA, D2 and Cluster analysis, twenty brinjal genotypes were grouped into were grouped into five different clusters. Cluster I, II, III, IV and V composed of three, three, four, six and four genotypes respectively. The maximum intra cluster distance was exhibited by cluster III (1.918), whereas the highest value for inter cluster distance was recorded between cluster II and V (95.69). Mean performance of cluster revealed the highest number of fruits per plant (13.45) and yield per plant (0.71) value in cluster IV. Therefore, considering cluster distances, contribution of characters towards divergence, magnitude of cluster mean performance, genetic parameters and based on the objectives, the genotypes G10 (Choto Katali) and G20 (BARI Bt Begun 2) from cluster III, G11 (BARI Hybrid Begun 2) and G8 (BARI Begun 6) from cluster II, G5 (BARI Hybrid Begun 4) along with G18 (Local Black Long) from cluster IV might be used in future breeding program.