Genotype × environment interaction analysis of multi-location trial data of sugarcane using variance components and Perkins & Jink model

Sugarcane is one of the most important long duration commercial crops grown in India, with large number of varieties. Indian placed second rank in sugarcane production after Brazil. Primary industries such as sugar mills, jaggery producing units, and chemical industries are largely depend on this crop. Multi-Location Trials (MLT) are being conducted for performance testing of genotypes. Differential performance of genotypes over environments is called as Genotype× Environment Interaction (GEI). The problem of Genotype× Environment Interaction poses a significant challenge when it comes to select and recommend the best genotypes for crop cultivation. This challenge becomes even more pronounced in the case of long duration crop like sugarcane. Unstable cultivar of sugarcane selected for cultivation leads to considerable financial risks for farmers over an extended period. The present study has been carried out using secondary data of 17 different genotypes grown in 6 locations over two years in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with two replication conducted at G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar for assessing the Genotype × Environment Interactions analysis using Analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Perkins and Jinks model. The results revealed that there are highly significant variations among the genotypes, GEI and heterogeneity components indicating the presence of substantial diversity within the genotypes of sugarcane and the influence of different environmental conditions. The contribution of variation due to G × E Interaction in total variation found to be significant at 5% level of significance which are varies from characters to characters for all the nine traits under study. Ranking of the genotypes obtained by Perkins stability measures (Bi) found to be significantly correlated with ranks obtained by means. The correlation varied from 0.67 to 0.92 character to character.