Annals of Forest Research (Feb 2011)
Provenance variation in cone, seed and seedling characteristics in natural populations of Pinus wallichiana A.B. Jacks (Blue Pine) in India
Abstract
Variability studies in different seed sources of Pinus wallichiana (Blue Pine) with respect to cone, seed and seeding traits were undertaken at Forest Research Institute, Dehra Dun, India under the framework of USDA pine project The studies revealed significant variability in terms of mean values, critical difference, and coefficient of variation, broad sense heritability, genetic advance and genetic gain. Most of the traits showed significant correlation with geographical factors viz. longitude, latitude and altitude.Genotypic variance (Vg) and genotypic coefficient of variance (GCV) were found to be higher than corresponding environmental (Ve) and environmental coefficient of variability (ECV) for most of the parameters except cone length, germination energy, germination energy index and collar diameter which indicate the dominance of environment on the expression of these traits. Moderate to high percentage of heritability coupled with high genetic gains for cone diameter and weight, seed/cone, seed length, thickness and weight, germination percente and value, cotyledon number, radicle and hypocotyls length, nursery germination percent & value and extension growth imply that these traits are under strong genetic control and there is ample scope for exploitation of heritable additive genetic component for further breeding and improvement in this species. UPGMA clustering analysis of various traits of cone, seed and seedling grouped all seed sources into 5 clusters with large inter-cluster distances. Clustering of geographically distant seed sources into one group revealed that distantly located sources are genetically close.
