Vegetos

Abstract

In order to investigate the effect of ge-netic variability, genetic advance, heritability in papaya and its character association responses to yield in papaya, a field experiment was carried out with seventeen genotypes and three replica-tions during 2010 and 2011 at Horticultural Re-search Centre (HRC) of S V P University of Agri-culture and Technology, Meerut. The results indi-cated that for yield improvement, high range of plant height (120 to 185.33 cm), flower initiation (212.93 to 228.83 days), flowering (days) (230.83 to 242.27), fruits plant⁻¹ (19.67 to 60.73), fruit weight (906.90 to 1558.77 g) and fruit yield plant⁻¹ (24.87 to 70.33 kg) were important. Heritability values obtained for plant height at flowering (99.70%) followed by fruit weight (97.50%), fruit plant⁻¹(96.40%), flower initiation (94.80%), fruit yield plant⁻¹(93.50%) indicated that these charac-ters were highly influenced by environmental fluctuations. High PCV, GCV and high genetic advance associated with high heritability. Fruit yield plant⁻¹ had significant positive both associ-ation with plant height at flowering, petiole length, number of leaves at flowering, fruit length, fruit girth, central cavity, pulp thickness, TSS and number of fruits plant⁻¹ both at geno-typic and phenotypic level respectively.