Variability and association studies for morphological and biochemical traits in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.)

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most important food crops after rice, wheat and maize. This world-crop has historically contributed to securing the food and nutrition and avoiding poverty and hunger. In the emerging global economic order in which agricultural crop production is witnessing a rapid transition to agricultural commodity production, potato is appearing as an important crop, poised to sustain and diversity food production in this new millennium. The identification of genotypes with high variability and heritability for agromorphological characters is the pre-requisites of breeding programme. Partitioning of variance into various components provides information regarding breeding value and nature and magnitude of variability in the expression of a particular trait. The polygenic characters and its components are highly influenced by environment and become difficult to know whether the variability is heritable or environmental. Therefore, the present investigation is carried out to gather information on magnitude of variability in potato under two different environments.