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Character Association and Path Analysis for Quantitative Traits in Garlic (Allium sativum L.)

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is one of the most important remunerative bulbous spice and medicinal crop grown commercially. It is the seconf most widely used spice after onion. It belongs to family Alliaceae because of its superior ovary and scapose umbeliate inflorescence. The name garlic is derived from the old English word "gar" meaning spear presumably referring to clove. Allium longicupis is considered to be its wild International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6 Number 8 (2017) pp. 175-184 Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com

ancestor, which is extensively found in Central Asia. Garlic (Allium sativum L.) has 2n=2x=16 chromosome number. Garlic is a perennial plant, cultivated mainly for bulbs. The edible underground stem is the composite bulb made up of numerous smaller bulbs called clove. Leaves have solid thin blades. Some varieties produce flowers but these flowers do not set seeds. There are some varieties which produce vegetative bulbs on the top called bulbils. They are also used for propagation in some cases.
The basic rationale in any crop improvement programme is the increase in yield potential of the crop. The character bulb yield has got a complex gene action and so, in order to study it properly, different factors affecting the yield must be considered and evaluated with regard to their contribution to yield. Knowledge in respect of nature and magnitude of association with different component characters is a pre-requisite to bring the improvement in desired direction. In order to accumulate optimum combination of bulb yield contributing characters in a single genotype, it is essential to know the relationships among themselves.
Further, the bulb yield is influenced by its various components directly and or indirectly via other traits that create a complex situation before a breeder for making selection. Therefore, path coefficient analysis could provide a more realistic picture of the inter relationship, as it partitions the correlation in direct and indirect effect of the variables.

Materials and Methods
One hundred and fifty six genotypes and four checks of garlic were sown in an Augmented Randomized Block Design (ARBD) (Federer, 1956) during rabi season of 2015-2016. The cloves were planted at a distance of 15 cm row to row and 10 cm plant to plant as per spacing. Other recommended agronomical practices and plant protection measures were followed for the successful raising of the crop. The observations were recorded on various quantitative characters viz., plant height (cm), number of leaves per plant, leaf length (cm), leaf width at middle portion (cm), days to maturity (days), pseudostem height (cm), collar thickness (cm), bulb collar diameter (cm), bulb equatorial diameter (cm), bulb polar diameter (cm), bulb weight (g), number of cloves per bulb, clove weight (g), clove length (cm), clove polar diameter (cm), clove equatorial diameter (cm), total soluble solids (%) and bulb yield (kg/ha). were recorded on five competitive plants per genotype in each plot were randomly selected for the purpose of recording observations on different characters (except days to maturity) and their averages were used in the statistical analysis.
Days to maturity was measured on plot basis. The phenotypic and genotypic correlation coefficients of all the characters were workedout as per Al-Jibouri et al., (1958). The path coefficient analysis was carried out as per the method suggested by Dewey and Lu (1959). Phenotypic correlation coefficients of 17 variables with bulb yield were used to estimate the path coefficients for the direct effects of various independent characters on bulb yield.

Results and Discussion
The correlation coefficients were worked out among 18 characters to find out association of bulb yield with its components at genotypic (r g ) and phenotypic (r p ) levels. The data given in (Table 1) revealed that in general, the genotypic correlation coefficients were higher than the respective phenotypic correlations which might be from modifying effect of environment on the association of characters at genotypic level. Selection of yield as such may not be effective since there may be number of genes for bulb yield and bulb yield may be resultant of interaction among its various components. Knowledge of relation between bulb yield and its component is essential and selection for one component may bring about a simultaneous change in the other.
Therefore, for a rational approach to improve bulb yield, it may be useful to collect information on character association. Results of genotypic and phenotypic correlation analysis of present study are graphically represented in figures 1 and 2.
The correlation of plant height showed positive and significant at genotypic and phenotypic level with leaf length, collar thickness, bulb weight, number of cloves per bulb, bulb yield indicating that selection based on these traits will help increasing the plant height of garlic. Similar result was found by Singh (1981), Shaha et al., (1990), Kohli and Fageria (1992), Kohli and Mahajan (1993), Barman et al., (1996) and Esho (2015).
Generally, the value of correlation coefficients lies between -1.0 to 1.0. In the present study all the values of correlation coefficient ranged from -1.0 to 1.0 except one case, the value of correlation coefficient was more than 1; it may be due to when covariance is over estimated whereas variance is under estimated (Roy, 2000).
When two or more variables are included in the correlation studies, it becomes difficult to determine which characters enhance the yield. The technique of path coefficient analysis overcomes this situation which partitions the forces of association and examines the relative contribution of direct and indirect effects of the independent variables on the dependent variables. The direct and indirect effects of variance characters along with bulb yield are executed in table 2.
The characters, which had shown significant phenotypic correlation with bulb yield, were considered for the results as well as discussion.   The phenotypic path coefficient analysis revealed that plant height (0.3108) followed by clove polar diameter (0.4153) exhibited high and positive direct effect on bulb yield and was found to be the most important yield components. The characters leaf width at middle portion (0.1489) and pseudostem height (0.1123) had low and positive direct effect on bulb yield, while bulb equatorial diameter (0.0468), bulb polar diameter (0.0334), bulb weight (0.0692), number of cloves per bulb (0.0056), clove equatorial diameter (0.0799), and total soluble solids (0.0975) had very low or negligible and positive direct effect on bulb yield. High and positive direct effect of plant height on bulb yield has also been reported in garlic by Srivastava et al., (1993), Barman et al., (1996), Agarwal (1999), Shaha and Kale (1999), Agrawal and Tiwari (2009) Pervin et al., (2014) and Satesh Kumar et al., (2015), of clove polar diameter on bulb yield by Sharma et al.,(2016). Thus, these characters viz., plant height and clove polar diameter turned out to be the major components of bulb yield and direct selection for these traits will be rewarding for yield improvement.