Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2020) 9(6): 01-12 1 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2020.906.001 Genetic Variability Studies in Gossypium barbadense L. Genotypes for Seed Cotton Yield and its Yield Components N. Premalatha 1* , L. Mahalingam 1 , M. Kumar 2 and S. Rajeswari 1 1 Department of Cotton, Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore – 641 003, India 2 Technical and Personal officer to the Vice – Chancellor, TNAU, Coimbatore, India *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Cotton is one of the most important fibre and cash crop of India and plays a dominant role in the industrial and agricultural economy of the country. It provides the basic raw material to cotton textile industry. Cotton crop not only provides fibre for the textile industry, but also plays a role in the feed and oil industries with its seed, rich in oil and protein. Germplasm is the one which contains higher amount of genetic variability so it is composed of lines which have diversity in genes and alleles conferring different ranges of yield and fibre quality traits. The value of germplasm can be known only when it is properly characterized. The successful breeding program and effective management of plant genetic resources depends on the ability to distinguish genotypes and to identify distant elite lines from germplasm resources (Owen et al., 2005). International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 9 Number 6 (2020) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com A total of one hundred and sixty germplasm accessions of Gossypium barbadense were evaluated for sixteen traits to assess their per se performance, variability, heritability, genetic advance, correlation and path analysis. The analysis of variance had shown significant differences between the genotypes for all the traits indicating the presence of sufficient variability in the experimental material. Based on the per se performance and range in G. barbadense, the accessions viz., Giza 45, CCB-1, 26/5W, CBS 202, EC111248, 32/2R, SIA-9 and K 2308 exhibited desirable values for the characters viz., single plant yield, boll weight, seed index, Upper half mean length, fibre strength, micronaire value, uniformity ratio and elongation percentage. PCV was higher than the GCV for all the studied characters. This denotes that all the traits under the investigation were influenced by the environmental effects. High heritability along with high genetic advance was observed in traits like plant height, number of bolls per plant, seed index, lint index, boll weight, micronaire and single plant yield per plant. These characters need to be given more importance during selection as these traits were governed by additive genes and hence selection of genotypes based on these characters would be effective. Correlation studies revealed that single plant yield had highly positive significant association with number of sympodia per plant, number of bolls per plant and boll weight. Hence selection based on these characters will help in improving the seed cotton yield. Keywords Cotton, Gossypium barbadense L., per se performance, genetic variability, heritability and genetic advance Accepted: 10 May 2020 Available Online: 10 June 2020 Article Info