Genetic Evaluation of European Carrots (Daucus Carota L) in Mid Hills of Himachal Pradesh

There is an urgent need to recommend suitable cultivars of European carrots for commercial cultivation which are early maturing, high yielding and uniform, free from cracking, coreless, rich in carotene, health promoting substances and phytochemicals and acceptable to the consumers after their proper evaluation to make European carrot production in the hills more remunerative. So, twenty nine genotypes of European carrot were evaluated at Solan in Randomized Block Design with 3 replications. Genotype C-15, C-19, C-20, C-21, C-24, C-26 and C-27 were found promising in the study. Mean squares due to genotypes were found highly significant for all the quantitative traits except for days to marketable root. High heritability accompanied with high genetic gain for leaf length, root length, core diameter, gross root weight, net root weight and yield is an indication of additive gene effect suggests that selection could be performed effectively on the basis of phenotypic performance with a great reliance. Net root weight, an indicator of yield had positive and highly significant association with all the characters except for number of leaves, core diameter and root/top ratio. The farmers of hilly area are growing European carrots as off- season vegetable crop.