The present study was an analysis of genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance for ten quantitative traits using forty five F1s, obtained by crossing ten genotypes of forage sorghum in half-diallel mating design. These forty-five crosses were grown the following year in a Randomized Block Design (RBD) with ten of their parents and three replications. The mean sum of squares due to treatment was determined to be highly significant for all ten traits under study. In this study the higher phenotypic co-efficient of variation was recorded than the genotypic co-efficient of variation for all the measured characters, which indicate that major influenced by environment. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance as percent of mean was observed for the characters like green fodder yield followed by leaf area, leaf stem ratio, leaf breath, stem girth, leaves per plant and total soluble solids. In comparison of high heritability coupled with high genetic advance observed for leaf breadth followed by stem girth, leaves per plant, leaf area, leaf stem ratio, total soluble solids and green fodder yield whereas, moderate genetic advance was observed for plant height, leaf length and days to 50% flowering. Based on the present study, results based on high variability and higher heritability found with high genetic advance for higher qualitative traits which can be used for improvement of fodder yield its contributed traits. Loss of genetic variability is the major challenge of plant breeder for crop improvement.

Sorghum bicolor, Variability, Heritability and Genetic advance

In this study for green fodder yield, its contributing traits as well as one quality traits, these are found the highly significant differences among the materials. Analysis of variance for parents and crosses showed highly differed significantly for all the ten characters. Indicated that wide genotypic differences among the parental lines and F1’s hybrids. High heritability accompanied with high genetic advance as percent of mean was noted for green fodder yield followed by leaf area and leaf stem ratio. Indicating that through the character is least influenced by the environment effects, the selection may not be useful, because broad-sense character may not be useful, because broad-sense is based on total genetic variance which include both additive (fixable) and non-additive or non-fixable (dominance and epistasis). In other side, low heritability observed for some traits, like total soluble solids, days to 50% flowering and plant height which characters are highly influenced by the environmental effects, so genetic improvement through selection will be difficult. Because genotypic effect influenced by the masking effect of environment. The highly observed of genetic advance expressed as per cent of mean have been observed for leaf breadth, stem girth, leaves per plant, leaf area, leaf stem ratio and green fodder yield per plant indicating that the character is governed by additive genes, thereby, suggesting good response for selection based on per se performance. Whereas, low genetic advanced was found for the estimation for Plant height, leaf length and days to 50% flowering, which are indicating these character governed by non-additive (non-fixable) genes, so this indicate that heterosis breeding is beneficial for high green fodder yield. High heritability coupled with high genetic advance as a percent of mean indicate the heritability is due to additive genes effects, so selection may be fruitful. Finally, this result of high heritability with high genetic advance as a per cent of mean for green fodder yield was noted.

Pushpendra, S.K. Singh, L.K. Gangwar, Mukesh Kumar and Mukesh Kumar (2023). Study on Genetic Variability, Heritability and Genetic Advance in Forage Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench). Biological Forum – An International Journal, 15(8): 32-35.