Vegetos

Abstract

An attempt was made to identify jumbo nut hybrids in cashew with higher nut yield. The genotypes included 8 hybrids derived from various crosses involving six parents and two checks, namely NRCC Selection-2 and Bhaskara, both of them being popular varieties released by Directorate of Cashew Research, Puttur. After 8 years of field evaluation under replicated trial(six harvests), a promising hybrid, H-126 was identified as a jumbo nut hybrid with a nut size of nearly 12 g fitting in to kernel grade of higher than W150. Further, correlation and path analysis were carried out to understand the nature and magnitude of character association among 10 genotypes evaluated in randomized complete block design with three replications. Tree girth and spread showed significant genotypic correlations along with high direct effects on nut yield, indicating their suitability in selection process. Plant height, though with significant genotypic correlation, had negligible direct effects. However, it had high indirect effects through characters such girth and spread. Significant negative correlation with and direct effect on nut yield was observed for sex ratio. Hence, imposing selection based on height, spread and girth would improve the economic benefits from this population.