Estimation of genetic component of okra for yield and it's contributing traits

Genetic variability is a very important component of plant breeding for rising crop yields to cope with the ever-growing pressure on food production from an expanding world population. Therefore, an effort were made to create and assess the variability through hybridization using parameters like phenotypic coefficient of variation, genotypic coefficient of variation, heritability, genetic advance for different yield and its components in okra. The present investigation was carried out during rainy season of 2018 on 59 genotypes including 15 parents (11 lines, 4 testers) and 44 crosses of okra. The analysis of variance showed that significant genetic differences were present among genotypes for all the characters studied except number of primary branches per plant. This suggested that there was adequate amount of genetic variability among the experimental material and hence, a greater scope for the improvement of concerned characters through selection. The values of PCV were higher than that of GCV for all the thirteen characters indicating influence of environmental effects in the expression of these characters. Moderate to high PCV, GCV, heritability and estimates of genetic advance were observed for such component traits viz. average fruit weight, number of fruits per plant, number of seeds per fruit and fruit yield per plant. Thus, these components have ample scope for the improvement through selection.