GENETIC DIVERSITY FOR YIELD AND RELATED TRAITS IN UPLAND COTTON GENOTYPES.

An experiment to evaluate the genetic variability and yield potential in cotton cultivars was conducted at the Cotton Research Station, D.I. Khan, Pakistan, during 2013. The experiment was carried out in Randomized Complete Block design replicated four times. The genetic material comprised nine cotton cultivars viz., Gomal-93, SLH-373, BH-186, BH-172, CIM-573, CRIS-342, CIM-591, CIM-608 and DNH-105. Results depicted the significant (P≤ 0.01) differences for the investigated parameters. The genotype DNH-105 was the highest yielding genotype with seed yield of 2610.75 kg ha^-1, 42.3 bolls plant^-1, 3.57 g boll weight and 144.5 cm height in comparison to other eight genotypes. The cultivar Gomal-93 and SLH-373 also showed comparable yield and contributing parameters. The genetic variances of the studied parameters were higher in comparison to variances of environment and highly heritable in broad sense. These instant results suggest that these breeding materials have the room for further improvement and can be successfully utilized in future breeding programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]