Abstract

An experiment was conducted with eighty branched and non branching sesame genotypes to study the association between the yield and yield attributing traits. Observations were recorded on eight traits viz., days to 50 per cent flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of branches per plant, number of capsules per plant, 100 seed weight, grain yield per plant and oil content. In general the genotypic correlation coefficients were slightly higher than the phenotypic correlation coefficients, indicating the masking effect of the environment in the total expression of the genotypes. Plant height and number of capsules per plant showed significant and positive correlations with single plant yield at both genotypic and phenotypic levels. The trait plant height and number of capsules per plant showed positive correlation with all the other traits except 100 seed weight where as number of branches per plant showed negative correlation to oil content. The character number of capsules per plant showed high positive direct effects on grain yield per plant. The indirect effect of number of capsules per plant on grain yield through plant height, number of branches per plant, oil content and days to maturity was high.

Keywords: Sesame, grain yield, genotypic correlation coefficient and path analysis