Intercharacter Correlations in Sorghum in Relation to Genotypic and Environmental Variations

Intercharacter associations in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) were evaluated in four experiments that provided a diversity of production environments and genetic materials. The yield component that showed the highest correlation with grain yield in all experiments was number of seeds per head. Seed size was the component that showed next best correlation with yield. Heads per plant showed low correlation with yield in three of the four experiments. Grain yield was correlated significantly with the maturity-related characters, midbloom and black-layer formation, in all experiments. Yield also was correlated significantly with plant height among the diverse group of hybrids tested. The correlations of leaf area with grain yield did not seem sufficiently strong to suggest that indirect selection for yield by means of estimates of total-plant leaf area would be very effective