Estimation of genetic variability, heritability, genetic gain and correlation studies on seed and seedling traits in Grewia Optiva Drummond

The present investigations aimed to evaluate various seed and seedling characters of 35 open pollinated progenies of Grewia optiva from Himachal Pradesh, for which significant variations were observed. Progeny SI-3 (Deothal) excelled in almost all traits followed by SO-6 (Amberkothi), HA-1 (Bharari), SI-5 (Deyoltikkeri) and CH-5 (Rajpura). Seed weight was highly correlated with germination capacity (r(g)=0.980 and r(p)=0.642) and germination energy (r(g)=0.967 and r(p)=0.551). Variability estimates were highly significant (P<0.01) and genetic traits exhibited high variability for these traits. Higher variability estimates were aided by high heritability and genetic gains, which implied that the variations noticed in such traits, were genetically controlled in Grewia optiva and good amount of heritable additive genetic component can be exploited for population improvement of the species through selection and breeding programmes.