Jurial Baloch, Muhammad, Zubair Butt, Raja, Ali Jatoi, Wajid, Hussain Rind, Imdad, Mehmood Halo, Faizan, and Ali Keerio, Ayaz
Present study was carried-out in the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, Pakistan during 2012 to evaluate genetic potential of intra-hirsutum F2 populations for different polygenic traits. The experiment was conducted in RCBD with four replications. Eight segregating F2 populations alongwith seven parental lines were studied to determine genetic parameters such as genetic variances, heritability estimates in broad sense and genetic gains at 10 percent selection intensity. Mean performance of genotypes differed significantly for plant height, sympodial branches per plant, bolls per plant, boll weight, seed cotton yield per plant, lint percentage, seed index and fibre length. The results further revealed that among F2 progenies Bt. cotton × Sadori exhibited higher heritability, more genetic variance and greater genetic advances for bolls per plant (h2 = 75.17%, σ2g = 312.94, GA = 26.10), seed cotton yield per plant (h2 = 75.40%, σ2g = 2981.84, GA = 83.45), lint percentage (h2 = 79.25%, σ2g=138.66, GA = 18.44) and seed index (h2 = 55.51%, σ2g = 5.24, GA = 3.00). It displayed substantial values of genetic parameters for other traits also. With respect to fibre length, CIM-496 × Sadori population expressed maximum genetic variance (σ2g = 79.46) and high heritability (h2 = 75.17%) which was associated with greater genetic gains (GA = 13.60%). The study showed that most of the F2 progenies exhibited moderate to high heritability estimates, fair amount of genetic variance and appreciable amount of predicted genetic gains which suggest that characters were predominantly controlled by additive genes. So the breeding material under study could reliably be subjected to selection in subsequent generations of selfing for isolating the desirable segregants to improve all polygenic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]