Genetic analysis of some quantitative characters in F2 populations of intra-hirsutum crosses

Plant breeders are more interested in genetic variance rather than phenotypic variance because it is the only portion of total phenotypic variance which is amenable to selection and brings about further improvement in desirable characters. Ten F2 hybrids along with their ten parental lines were studied so as to predict genetic variance, heritability percentage in broad sense and genetic advance at 10% selection intensity. The mean performance of genotypes differed significantly for the characters i.e., number of sympodial branches per plant, number of bolls per plant, boll weight (g), seed cotton yield (g) and ginning outturn%. The results further revealed that among F2, hybrids, progeny CIM-499 x NB-1111/S exhibited maximum heritability percentage which was associated with high genetic variance and more genetic advance for number of bolls per plant, boll weight, seed cotton yield per plant whereas progeny VII-142 x CRIS-134 expressed maximum heritability percentage that was coupled with genetic variance and genetic advance for G. O. T % and also expressed next maximum values for number of bolls per plant and seed cotton yield. While, progeny NB-999 x CRIS-470 revealed maximum heritability percentage that was associated with fair amount of genetic variance and the highest genetic advance for sympodial branches per plant. Results on the whole revealed that quite a number of F2 progenies expressed moderate to high heritability percentage, fair amount of genetic variance and sufficient amount of predicted, genetic advance, suggesting that material under present study could reliably be used as potential segregating populations for screening desirable segregants from subsequent generations of selfing so as to improve all the quantitative traits studied.