Review Article Open Access

PATH ANALYSIS IN CLONES OF CASUARINA EQUISETIFOLIA

Abstract

Path analysis was performed in 33 select clones of Casuarina equisetifolia at the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding, Coimbatore. Path analysis is a special use of multiple regression to help understand and parcel out the sources of variation. In the integrated structure of the plant, the overall correlation observed between two variables will be a function of series of direct and indirect relationships between different variables. Though correlation analysis measures the relationship between dependent and independent characters, it does not provide information on how much a character contributes on its own and through other characters on the dependent variable. Path analysis was performed in the present study to understand the direct and indirect effects of characters namely, crown length, cladode length, cladode diameter and number of primary branches on volume index. Crown length only showed positive direct effect on volume. However, cladode length, cladode diameter and number of primary branches exerted positive indirect effects through crown length. Among these three traits, number of primary branches registered the maximum indirect effect. Crown length also registered high values for broad-sense heritability, genetic gain and genotypic coefficient of variation and thus, emerged as an important parameter for selecting superior genotypes.

Kannan C.S. Warrier, V. Sivakumar and B. Gurudev Singh

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