Genetic Diversity Analysis for Economically Important Traits of Sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) Ratoon Crop

Study on correlation and path coefficient analysis for cane yield and yield related traits in 20 accessions of sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) ratoon crop was conducted in the field of Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. Analysis of variance indicated highly significant differences (p = 0.01) among the accessions for all the traits as shown in Table 2. Among the traits studied cane weight had positive correlation both at genotypic and phenotypic level with plant height, leaf area, cane diameter, no. of nodes per plant, internodal distance, juice contents dry matter contents and bagasse weight (Table 3). Also cane weight has negative correlation with no. of tillers per plant and no. of millable canes per plant significant at phenotypic level (Table 3). The study of path coefficient analysis for yield related traits depicted that baggas weight exerts maximum direct effect on cane yield followed by juice contents and internodal distance and indirect effects of these traits via each other were also found maximum compared to other traits (Table 4) while Dry matter contents, Leaf area and No. of tillers per plant had negative direct effect on cane yield. Cluster analysis revealed that cluster II ( BF-129, CPF-234, CP-77-400, TRITON and SPSG-26) showed highest values (Table 7) for most of the traits like plant height, leaf area, cane diameter, No. of nodes, juice contents, dry matter contents, bagasse weight and cane weight. The similar trend is also shown by PCA biplot. So best performing sugarcane accessions like cluster II viz BF-129, CPF-234, CP-77-400, TRITON and SPSG-26 if selected for breeding against highly correlated variables of bagasse weight, juice contents and internodal distance with cane weight, can increase our yield qualitatively and quantitatively.