Abstract

Phylogenetic relationships, principal component and path analysis for genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance were studied in order to understand yield genetic parameters in sixty vetiver accessions. The coefficient of variation was low to high for nearly all traits. The ^h2 (BS) was low to medium (46.54 to 67.28%) for all the characters except high for oil yirld (88.97%). The oil yield was positive and significantly correlated with root yield (0.326**, 0.269**); essential oil content (0.549**, 0.512**) and plant height (0.409**, 0.210*). The root yield was also positively and significantly associated with essential oil content (0.368**, 0.226*). The further estimation of genetic variability through phylogenetic relationships dendrogram and principal component analysis (PCA) on vetiver genotypes shows that Veti-12, Veti-42, Veti -5 and Veti-35 were found closely related to each other than other accessions. Principal coordinate components accounted for 25% and 50% of the genetic similarity variance in the vetiver accessions. The path coefficient analysis revealed that the highest direct contribution to oil yield was made by oil content (0.475), plant height (0.299) and root yield (0.041). The indirect contribution was invariably large via plant height and essential oil content. The high essential oil yielding vetiver genotypes, namely Veti-12, Veti-42, Veti-5 and Veti-35 were found suitable for cultivation on the commercial scale.

Keywords: Associations; Heritability; Path analysis; Phylogenetic relationships; Principal component analysis