Abstract:
Finger millet is an important cereal crop in Ethiopia; however, the production of the crop is
not at its genetic potential due to a number of production challenges, such as the lack of high
yielding varieties and limited genetic information. Thus, the main objectives of this study were
to assess the genetic variability, heritability, genetic advance, and association among yield
and yield-related traits, as well as the direct and indirect effects of yield-related traits on
grain yield. Sixty-four finger millet genotypes were evaluated for seventeen traits in 2021 at
Mechara using an 8 x 8 simple lattice design. The result of the analysis of variance revealed
highly significant differences for the studied traits. The grain yield ranged from 1.38 t ha-1
for
G51 to 4.35 ton ha-1
for G47. High GCV and PVC values were found for biomass yield,
harvest index, and grain yield. Broad-sense heritability ranged from 50.12% for number of
fingers per ear to 93.18% for days to heading. High heritability coupled with high genetic
advance was observed for leaf number per plant, finger length, ear weight, thousand grain
weight, biomass yield, and harvest index. Grain yield had a highly significant positive
correlation with the number of productive tillers, thousand grain weight, biomass yield,
harvest index, leaf numbers per plant, ear weight, and number of ears per plant at both
genotypic and phenotypic levels. The biomass yield and harvest index had high positive direct
effect on grain yield at both the genotypic and phenotypic levels. Sixty-four genotypes were
analyzed using the clustering method, and they were divided into nine different clusters based
on Euclidean distance. The maximum inter-cluster genetic distance (8.9) was observed
between clusters III and IX, while the minimum inter-cluster distance (3.28) was found
between II and V. The first six PCs explained 76.3 percent of the total variability and were
accounted for at maximum variability in PC1 by ear length, ear width, and grain yield, while
PC2 was explained by days to heading, days to maturity, plant height, number of ears, and
harvest index. Generally, the present result showed the presence of genetic variations among
genotypes for yield and yield-related traits that could be used in future breeding work.
