Variability, heritability and genetic advance studies in Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

Abstract

Sixty brinjal germplasm lines were evaluated for fourteen quantitative characters. High PCV and GCV values were seen for plant height, plant spread, number of branches per plant, number of fruits per cluster, average fruit diameter, average fruit weight, shoot and fruit borer incidence on shoot and fruit and fruit yield per plant indicating high variability in the germplasm. In general, values of PCV were higher than the values of GCV indicating influence of environment but differences between PCV and GCV values were minimum, indicating that the traits under study were less influenced by environment and these characters could be improved by following phenotypic selection.. Genetic advance as per cent of mean were high (>20.0) for plant height (25.00), plant spread (115.07), average fruit weight (25.23) and shoot and fruit borer incidence on shoot (21.53).High heritability accompanied with high genetic advance was noticed for plant height, plant spread, average fruit weight and shoot and fruit borer incidence on shoot indicating that simple selection may be effective to fix and improve such traits.