AMMI analysis of a pearl millet yield trial

The analysis of yield trial data to draw accurate inference is an important aspect of the plant breeding programmes. Grain yield data on 44 pearl millet genotypes tested over 22 locations spread across India were subjected to the ordinary ANOVA and the additive main-effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) analyses. The ANOVA model analysed only the main effects (genotypes and environments) while treating the G×E interaction as residual and accounted for the 81.7 per cent of the trial 55 while AMMI model analyzed both the main effects and G×E interaction, and accounted for 86.1 per cent of the trial 55. Furthermore, biplot from AMMI1 parameters provided the comprehensive understanding of the pattern of the data. Thus, following the AMMI1 model, 9 genotypes (MH 305, MH 310, MH 328, MH 342, MH 393, MH 401, MH 406, MH 411 and MP 223) were identified as having general adaptability, while 11 genotypes (MH 306, MH 349, MH 351, MH 390; MH 394, MH 402, MH 403, MH 405, MH 408, MH 412 and MH 413) as with specific adaptability to the locations tested. The AMMI (biplot) analysis characterized the four locations, namely Gwalior (M.P.), Patancheru (A.P.), Gulberga (Karnataka) and Aurangabad-(Maharashtra) as the ideal locations for growing the pearl millet crop in general