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International Journal of Pure & Applied Bioscience (IJPAB)
Year : 2019, Volume : 7, Issue : 3
First page : (242) Last page : (244)
Article doi: : http://dx.doi.org/10.18782/2320-7051.7489

Study of Variability in Castor (Ricinus communis L.)

Nagarajan, S.*, Viswanathan, P. L., Venkatachalam, S. R., Manickam, S. and Ganapathi, N.

Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India
*Corresponding Author E-mail: snagarajan1971@gmail.com
Received: 18.04.2019 | Revised: 24.05.2019 | Accepted: 30.05.2019  

 ABSTRACT

Castor (Ricinus communis L) belongs to family Euphorbiaceae. It is an industrially important non edible oil seed crop widely cultivated in the arid and semi- arid regions. An insight into the magnitude of variability present in the gene pool of a crop species is of utmost importance to a plant breeder for initiating a judicious plant breeding programme. The coefficients of variation expressed at phenotypic and genotypic levels are generally used for comparing variability present for different characters. Sixty eight castor genotypes were evaluated for studying variability. Analysis of variance revealed high significant difference for all 11 characters, indicating the presence of variability among the 68 genotypes studied. High heritability was recorded for all traits except number of nodes upto primary spike. The high heritability values represent the fact that presence of additive gene action, hence the improvement in those traits could be effective through direct selection. High heritability coupled with high GA was observed for traits plant height, primary spike length, effective length of primary spike, number of capsules per spike, total number of spikes, 100 seed weight and seed yield per plant indicates that heritability is due to additive gene effects and selection may be effective.

Key words: Genetic variability, Heritability and Genetic advance.

Full Text : PDF; Journal doi : http://dx.doi.org/10.18782

Cite this article: Nagarajan, S., Viswanathan, P.L., Venkatachalam, S.R., Manickam, S. and Ganapathi, N., Study of Variability in Castor (Ricinus communis L.), Int. J. Pure App. Biosci.7(3): 242-244 (2019). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18782/2320-7051.7489