Studies on Correlation and Path Coefficient for Yield and Its Contributing Traits in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

The current study was conducted at the agriculture research farm of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Punjab during the kharif season 2022. A Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications were used to study correlation and path including 27 rice germplasm for the thirteen traits studied viz. Days to 50% flowering, Plant height (cm), Panicle length (cm), Number of tillers per plant, Number of spikelets per panicle, Flag leaf length (cm), Flag leaf width (cm), Number of filled grains per panicle, Days to maturity, Single plant yield (g), Test weight (g), Biological yield (g) and Harvest Index. Finding reveled that genotypic correlation coefficients were higher than phenotypic correlation coefficients for most of the characters studied indicating slight environmental effects over the traits. Single plant yield had significant positive correlation with harvest index (0.873, 0.976), Test weight (0.686, 0.738), panicle length (0.497, 0.603), number of tillers per plant (0.459, 0.505), days to maturity (0.398, 0.677), number of filled grains per panicle (0.395, 0.461) and days to 50 %flowering (0.253, 0.607) at phenotypic and genotypic level that were found to be helpful in encouraging rapid improvement of yield. Path coefficient analysis indicates that the harvest index (0.735, 0.999) had the highest direct and positive effect on single plant yield followed by biological yield (0.135, 0.459), days to maturity (0.088, 0.317), flag leaf width (0.087, 0.155) at both phenotypic and genotypic level respectively. These results revealed that single plant yield had maximum positive indirect effect through harvest index, biological yield, plant height, number of total tillers and number of filled grains per panicle. Hence, selection for these characters could bring improvement in yield and yield components.