STABILITY IN YIELD PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF SELECTED COTTON (Gossypium hirsutum) GENOTYPES IN VARIABLE AGRO-ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Yield constancy is a crucial characteristic for a variety to become popular among growers. To study this aspect, the present trial was carried out at seven locations in the cotton belt of Punjab during 2020-21. Twenty-five upland cotton strains from different breeding stations were tested along with the standard variety CIM-602. The main objective was to choose super-yielding plus stable strains. Maximum variability due to environments (65%) followed by GEI (22.8%) was observed. The first two interaction principal components (IPC) were squeezed with 72.3% of cumulative variability due to GEI. The analysis of additive main effects and multiplicative interaction (AMMI) diagnosed AMMI5 as an appropriate model. Strain CKC-5 gave maximum mean yield (1812kg ha-1) and winner in all AMMI models. Test sites were split into two mega environments (ME). ENT7 (CRS Faisalabad) site was bearing the highest mean seed cotton yield of (2532kg ha-1) with the biggest (52.18) IPC1 score. The correlation between sites and IPC1 scores was (0.68) as recorded by AMMI analysis. AMMI1 ranks depicted that (PCI2) CIM-875 bears yield advantage of (29.09%) at ENT6 (Vehari) site over (trial winner strain CKC-5) due to micro adaptations. Genotype Selection Index (GSI) discriminated strain BS-J5 as yielder cum stable one with the least GSI value. Approval of this strain for general cultivation from the respective forum may boost cotton production in the province.