Character Association and Path Analysis of Exotic Bread Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) Genotypes for Yield and Related Traits at Kokate and Hossana, Southern Ethiopia

Correlations and path coefficients were studied in 48 exotic and 1 recently released bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes for 11 yield contributing characters. The correlation coefficients were determined to find out the inter relationship among the characters studied. Grain yield was found highly significant and positively correlated with number of kernels per spike (rg = 0.303, rp = 0.261), biological yield (rg = 0.561, rp = 0.531), thousand seed weight (rg = 0.317, rp = 0.274) and harvest index (rg = 0.446, rp = 0.416), which indicated that grain yield could be increased by improving these traits. In order to obtain an understandable picture of the inter relationship between grain yield and its components, direct and indirect effects were measured using path coefficient analysis. Biological yield exhibited the highest positive direct effect (0.913) on grain yield followed by harvest index (0.835). The traits showed high positive direct effect on grain yield indicated that direct selection for these traits might be effective and there is a possibility of improving grain yield through selection based on these traits. The genotypic path coefficient analysis exhibited the residual value of 0.32 indicating that 68% of the variability in grain yield was contributed by characters considered in the path analysis study and the remaining 32% was the contribution of other characters which were not considered in the path analysis and environmental factors. This further elaborated that the choice of yield attributing characters in the study was quite better, even if other characters are also needed to justify grain yield in bread wheat.