Genetic variability and association among chilli genotypes for quantitative and qualitative traits

Aset of twenty-one breeding lines of chilli were screened for genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance for yield and related traits.Atotal of eight quantitative and two qualitative characters were studied including capsaicin content in the green chillies and the incidence of phytophthora fruit rot. Sufficient genetic variability was found for all characters. Screening for incidence of phytophthora fruit rot revealed that no genotype was completely resistant while 17 were moderately resistant and 4 were susceptible.Among all the genotypes, UHF-CHI-13 was superior in terms of yield with second-highest total capsaicin content and was least affected by phytophthora fruit rot. Correlation and path analysis at the green fruit stage for green fruit yield indicated that correlation between green fruit yield per plant and number of fruits per plant (0.842), green fruit breadth at middle (-0.634) and total capsaicin content in green chilli (-0.067) was due to the direct effect of these characters revealing true relationship between them. Thus, direct selection for these characters will be effective for yield improvement.