Assessment of genetic variability in growth, reproductive phenology, seed characters and yield in Jatropha curcas (L.) genetic resources Kumar R. V.*, Ahlawat S. P., Pandey S. K., Ranjan Rajeev, Joshi D. C. Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi-284003, India *Corresponding author E-mail: rvkumar4@rediffmail.com
Online published on 21 July, 2012. Abstract Twenty seven accessions of Jatropha curcas collected from different predominant naturalized locations in central India were evaluated for genetic variability in seed and growth characters. Significant trait differences were observed in all the seed characters, oil content and growth characters. The genotypic coefficients of variation too were comparatively lower than phenotypic coefficient of variation for all the characters studied indicating the predominant influence of environment. Broad sense heritability was high in general and exceeded 70% all the seed traits studied except for seed length. High heritability and genetic advance was recorded for oil content and seed yield indicating the preponderance of additive gene action. On the basis of non-hierarchical Euclidian cluster analysis, 27 accessions were grouped in to 6 clusters with maximum number of accessions falling in cluster II while cluster III included only one accession. Multivariate analyses were performed in order to establish similarity and dissimilarity patterns. Principal component (PC) analysis revealed that first three PC axes explained 60.17% of the total multivariate variation while the first five PC axes explained 76.18% variation. The wide range genetic variability between the accessions suggested that the current germplasm collection preserved the vast majority of the natural variation in Jatropha curcas. Top Keywords Euclidian cluster analysis, Genetic variability, Genotypic coefficient of variation Jatropha curcas, Phenotypic coefficient of variation. Top |