Genetic variability and trait association studies in celosia accessions for growth and yield characters

Improving the yield and other characteristics of a crop requires an understanding of the type and extent of variability present in the plant material as well as the relationships between the traits. This study focuses on thirty-five accessions of Celosia species, evaluated for genetic variability in 19 quantitative and qualitative traits, to understand the associations between these characters and their contribution to flower yield. The objective of the work was to investigate the genetic variability and association between traits to rationally improve the yield of Celosia species. The data used in this study were assessed at 70 days after transplanting (DAT) to complete flowering in all Celosia accessions for its growth and yield. From the results of the analysis, the trait, single flower weight had the larger estimates of GCV (41.9 %) and PCV (46.29 %) of all parameters that were recorded. For most traits examined, higher estimates of heritability were recorded, particularly for plant spread (E-W) (99 %), while significant genetic advance per mean was in single flower weight (78.14 %). Leaf length (0.34) and seed weight (0.81) showed a significant positive correlation with the number of flowers per plant, indicating strong potential for increasing yield. The parameters like plant height (0.8132) and leaf length (0.7602) had the most direct impact on flower yield, according to the path analysis results. Based on this conclusion, it appears that Celosia species can be improved by analyzing the features acquired from selection criteria based on genetic parameters and employing them for improved crop yield in future breeding works.