Research Article Genetic Variability, Heritability and Character Association of Twelve Sugar Cane Varieties in Finchaa Sugar Estate West Wolega Zone Oromia Region of Ethiopia

Field experiment was conducted to estimate variability, heritability, and character associations for twelve sugarcane genotypes for sprouting percentage, number of tiller and millable cane, internode length and cane height, cane yield, sugar percent cane, and sugar yield using completely randomized block design on luvisol types at Finchaa Sugar Estate of Ethiopia. The result indicated medium GCV and PCV for millable cane (15.32 and 17.30), cane yield (13.22 and 17.59) and low GCV and Medium PCV for sugar yield (8.73 and 15.05) while; low GCV for number of inter node (2.64), cane diameter (6.28) and sucrose % (8.19). The estimates for phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) were higher than for genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) in all the traits, indicating greater influence of environment on the expressed phenotype of the traits. However, the high GCV and PCV indicated that selection could be effective based on these characters and their phenotypic expression would be good indication of the genotypic potential. Moreover, high heritability were recorded for characters such as cane yield (64.85) and millable cane (78.46); moderate heritability for interned length (56.28), plant height (46.50), stalk diameter (58.96) and sugar yield (33.65), while low heritability were recorded for number of internodes (13.26). This confirms for traits that expressed high to medium heritability, simple selection would be effective method of sugar cane variety selection since these traits are highly heritable from parents to progenies. On the other hand, analysis of character association showed that cane yield was positively and highly (P<0.01) significantly correlated with single cane height (r = 0.50**) and millable cane number (r = 0.57**) while positively an