Abstract

Pearl millet is the fifth most important cereal crop, and the most important millet with more than 55 percent of global millet production, grown in 40 countries, predominantly in Africa and Asia, as a staple food grain and source of feed, fodder, fuel and construction material in the hottest, driest, semi-arid and arid regions where rainfed agriculture is practiced. India is the largest producer of this crop, both in terms of area (9.1 m ha) and production (7.3 m t), with an average productivity of 780 kg/ha. Nearly 50 per cent of the millet area is under hybrid cultivars. Understanding of the interaction of the traits among themselves and with the environment is of great use in plant breeding. Correlation studies provide information on the nature and extent of association between any two metric traits and it would be possible to bring out genetic upgradation in one trait will be efficient in selection of the other trait of a pair also. However, some earlier reports on high phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation for grain yield/plant is available (Abraham et al., 1989; Harer and Karad, 1998; Kulkarni et al., 2000). Correlation between line per se and hybrid performance of CMS lines showed positive and high correlation coefficient values for days to 50 per cent flowering, spike length, spike girth, grain density and 1000 grain weight were reported by Madhusudhana and Govila (2001). Grain yield was positively and significantly correlated with tillers per plant and biological yield per plant which was reported by Manoj Kumar et al. (2002). Grain yield per plant showed significant positive correlation with all its component traits viz., days to 50 per cent flowering, days to physiological maturity, number of tillers per plant, number of productive tillers per plant, plant height, ear length, ear girth, 1000 grain weight and dry fodder weight per plant at both genotypic and phenotypic levels which was reported by Salunke et al. (2006). The present study was planned to understand the association of various characters and their cause with yield and its components in pearl millet involving different sources of male sterile lines and their hybrids

Keywords: Pearl millet, Yield