Genetic Variability of Melilotus albus Half-sib Families in Seed Production Characters

GUERCIO ANA; NAZAR ADA; MACIEL MARIA; ANDRES ADRIANA

Buenos Aires

Simposio; 5 th International Symposium of Forage Breeding; 2015

facultad de agronomia-Universidad de Buenos Aires

Melilotus albus is an important component of temperate pastures, widespread along Argentina and adapted to different environments. Recent studies detected high genetic variability among natural populations collected on broad geographical scale and in response to extreme ecological habitats. 58 agronomically superior genotypes were selected from the populations collected and half-sib families (HSF) were generated. The objective of this study was to characterize the genetic variability of 22 HSF. Each HSF (15 genotypes) were sown under spaced-plant conditions in a randomized complete block design with 3 replicates, in the INTA Experimental Station, located in Pergamino (33°53?46??S 60°34?16??W). Characters associated with the production of seeds were evaluated in 330 genotypes: flowering date (FD), plant height at harvest (HH), 1.000-seed weight (SW) and total seed weight (TW). ANOVA, comparison of phenotypic means (LSD) and determination of phenotypic correlations between characters using the SAS statistical software (v 9.1) were performed. Genetic variations among HSF were calculated from ANOVA and the genetic parameters (additive variance, environmental variance, phenotypic variance and narrow-sense heritability) were estimated. Significant differences (p