Variability, Heritability and Genetic Advance for Yield and Shoot Fly Resistance Associated Traits in Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) of Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]

The present investigation was carried out with 210 Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) at the Instructional Dairy Farm of the Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India and the experiment was conducted during kharif season, 2018-19 in augmented design with three replications with the objective to access variability, heritability and genetic advance for 18 traits studied to select suitable shoot fly resistace RILs. The analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences for the trait viz., seedling height, days to 50 per cent flowering, plant height, stem diameter, number of nodes per plant, leaf length, leaf width, 1000 grain weight, dry fodder yield and green fodder yield, while significant differences were found in case of oviposition and dead heart per cent at 21 days after emergence. Eleven traits showed higher value of Genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) than environment coefficient of variation (ECV). Total soluble solid (TSS) percent showed highest GCV followed by green fodder yield while dead heart per cent at 14 days after emergence showed highest ECV followed by days to emergence and Hydrocyanic acid content. Among the traits with high heritability, only plant height, dry fodder yield, and green fodder yield exhibited high genetic advance suggesting the additive gene action, making these traits suitable targets for effective selection in the RIL population. Further, molecular markers can be identified for key traits used in marker-assisted selection, and selected RILs can be evaluated in multi-environment trials for stability and adaptability.