Variability Analysis Of Three Synthetic Populations Of Nigerian Pearl Millet (Pennisetum Americanum (L.) Leeke) And Implications In Crop Improvement

📄 Project Abstract

Three synthetic populations originally from the Nigerian germplasm collections were evaluated for variability in 9 traits using a simple 9 x 9 lattice design. Mean performance differed significantly in the two years of evaluation for some traits, while some means were not significantly different in the two years. Expression of all the characters exhibited a wide range among the the populations, though the coefficients of variation were generally low, a range of 10.52% -16.513% being the highest in the populations, observed for plant height. The phenotypic variance was consistently higher than the genotypic variance across the populations for all the traits, and by far, error was the largest variance component for all the traits. Broad sense heritability estimates were low to high (29.667% to 86.357%); but the accompanying genetic advance was very low. Expressed as a percentage of mean, the highest estimate was 4.91% obtained for grain yield. All correlation coefficients were positive i...