Abstract:
Twenty potato genotypes were evaluated in Randomized Complete Block Design Replicated three times for their yield potentials and agronomic characteristics. The experiment was conducted at the Research Farm of the potato programme of National Root Crops Research Institute, Kuru, Plateau State, during the 2005, 2006 and 2010 cropping seasons. Results showed that the genotypes differed significantly for all the traits. Five genotypes 375400.00, Desiree, WC732-1, 392278.4, and 676008 were most promising based on tuber yield and other agronomic traits. Famosa an elite genotype did not perform better than these promising genotypes. Year effect was significant for all the traits except plant height while genotype x year interaction was significant except emergence counts, internodes length, plant height and number of leaves/plant suggesting the need to evaluate these genotypes for more number of years. The genotypes were grouped into 5 clusters based on Mahalanobis D2, high inter-cluster differences were observed between cluster III and V, and IV and V implies that genotypes in these different cluster groups can be used as parents in hybridization and expected to give a wide array of segregants. The correlation and path coefficient analysis indicated higher magnitude genotypic correlation coefficients than the corresponding phenotypic estimates, thereby indicating that there is strong inherent association between these characters. Tuber number/plant, showed the highest positive direct effect on tuber yield. This indicates that tuber number could be used as indirect selection index for improving tuber yield. Principal component extracted from the correlation matrix showed that average tuber weight, number of eyes/tuber and plant height had significant loadings on the first axis. The second axis shows number of stems had negative significant loading
GENETIC VARIABILITY STUDIES OF TWENTY POTATO GENOTYPES
