Abstract:
Many breeding actvities take place in sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]’s but still
production and productivity is by far lower than its potential in Northeastern Amhara,
Ethiopia. Knowledg of genetic variability is prerequisite for generating superior varieties.
Therefore identifing the varabliety of recently imroved gentypes give suggestion for farther
breeding prorgrams. Thus the research was carried out with the objectives of determining the
magnitude of genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance, the genotypic and phenotypic
association among traits, clustering and identifying promising sorghum genotypes for further
breeding. Hundred genotypes, including checks, were evaluated at Kobo research sub-center,
Northeastern Amhara, Ethiopia in the 2019 main cropping season using alpha lattice design
with two replications. The analysis of variance revealed a significant difference among
genotypes for all traits. The highest genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation were
observed for grain yield, biomass, harvest index, head weight whereas, low genotypic and
phenotypic coefficients of variation were detected for days to flowering, days to maturity, and
stalk diameter. Heritability in a broad sense showed variation from 76.72 % for biomass and
up to 33.33% for stalk diameter and genetic advance as percent of mean ranged from 55.08
% for harvest index to 2.23% for days to maturity. High broad-sense heritability and high
genetic advance as percent of mean were obtained for head weight, biomass, grain yield and
harvest index. Grain yield showed positive and highly significant (< 0.01) association with
head weight, hundred seed weight, plant height, biomass and harvest index both at the
phenotypic and genotypic levels. Days to flowering negatively correlated with grain yield at
the phenotypic level. Hundred Sorghum genotypes were grouped into eight clusters based on
D
2analysis. The principal component analysis showed the first four PCs with eigenvalue > 1
contributed 70 % of the total variation exists within the studied sorghum genotypes. Based on
the current ETSC15368-2-2 and ETSC14789-3-2 were identified as promising sorghum
genotypes in grain yield, however, to have confirmed recommendation further research is
needed with more locations and years.
Keywords: Correlation, clustering, heritability, path coefficient analysis, principal component