Character Association of Different Varieties of Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) under Ranchi Condition

The present experimental work entitled “Character Association of Different Varieties of Turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) under Ranchi condition.” has been worked out in the research field of Department of Horticulture, Ranchi Agriculture College, Birsa Agricultural University, Kanke, Ranchi (Jharkhand) during Kharif season,2017. In this experiment 10 genotypes of turmeric have been evaluated with check Rajendra Sonia for different traits. Different observations were recorded at different interval on emergence, number of tillers and leaves per plant, plant girth and height, leaf length and breadth, length, girth and weight of mother, primary and secondary rhizomes, number of primary and secondary rhizomes per plant, yield per plot and yield ha, dry matter recovery. Significant differences have been observed among the different genotypes for all the traits by observing the Analysis of variance. Three genotypes among the 10 genotypes namely Pratibha (23.88 t/ha), BSR-I(21.03 t/ha) and Punjab Haldi (17.96 t/ha) have excelled over the check; Rajendra Sonia (12.81 t/ha) for most of the characters including rhizome yield per hectare. Performance for other horticultural traits viz. number of tillers per plant, number of primary and secondary rhizomes per plant, length and girth of mother rhizome and weight of mother were superior among these three genotypes. The correlation coefficients among the different characters at phenotypic and genotypic levels revealed that yield per plot was having significantly positive association with number of tillers per plant, leaf length, leaf width, plant height, number of leaves per plant, length of mother rhizome, girth and weight of mother rhizome. High heritability coupled with high genetic gain were estimated for weight of mother and secondary rhizomes and yield per plot. This indicates that these characters are under additive gene effects and are more reliable for effective clonal selection for yield improvement.