Variability in Garo Hill Cotton in Meghalaya

Race cernuum of Gossypium arboreum has unique characters like highest boll weight among the diploid cultivated forms and highest number of seeds per loculus among all species of Gossypium. Ginning out-turn is also higher than any cultivated species and has tolerance to bollworm. 101 collections of cernuum cotton from Garo-Hills of Meghalaya were made and observational on number of bolls/plant, boll weight, number of seeds/three loculi in a boll and bollworm incidence were recorded in the field. Ginning out-turn, seed index and lint index were recorded in the laboratory. Large variability in respect to various characters was recorded. Collection A-60 was found to be the best donor inover-all evaluation for various characters followed by A-24 and D 46-2-1.