Genetic Diversity and Association Analysis in Upland Cotton Cultivars

An experiment to find out the genetic diversity, correlation and regression coefficient of seed cotton yield with different qualitative and yield related morphological attributes in eight upland cotton cultivars was carried out at Cotton Research Station, Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan during April 2015. The cultivars viz; Cris-342, Cris-134, Cris-129, Gomal-93, Israr Shaheed, SLH-317, DNH-57 and CIM-573 were sown in a randomized complete block (RCB) design having three replications. All the cultivars revealed highly significant (P≤0.01) differences for seed cotton yield whereas boll weight, number of bolls plant-1, sympodial Internodal length and number of fruiting position on sympodia depicted significant (P≤0.05) differences while plant height, length of sympodia and height of first sympodia were having non-significant differences in mean values. The Pearson’s correlation coefficient (r) were significant, positive and highest between seed cotton yield and plant height (0.702), number of bolls plant-1 (0.813) and boll weight (0.775). Regression analysis revealed that plant height (R2= 0.493), boll weight (R2=0.60) and number of bolls plant-1 (R2=0.661) significantly (P≤0.05) contributed in the seed cotton yield. The information generated hence may be utilized for hybridization between genotypes for the creation of genetic variability in cotton. Keywords: correlation, genetic diversity, hirsutum, regression coefficient