Genetic Behavior of Families Selected from Some Local Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) Populations in Egypt

The objectives of the study were to investigate the genetic behavior of some biological and economical traits of 14 okra populations collected from Dakahlia Governorate, which underwent two cycles of inbreeding with selection. Selection of individual plants based on earliness, high number of pods, and minimum neck/pod ratio was carried out in all generations. The results showed that the means and ranges of all studied traits for all families became smaller in the S2 generation than those in the S0 generation. Highly significant variations were observed among populations for all the studied traits. The mean performance clearly indicated the agronomic superiority of some families over the others. Family 9 followed by family 12 showed the earliest flowering plants and the highest yield per plant. Phenotypic variances were higher than the corresponding genotypic variances indicating predominance of environmental effects on the expression of these characters. The magnitude of phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation varied from one trait to another. High broad-sense heritability coupled with high genetic advance as percent of mean were shown by the different traits, especially, plant height, number of branches per plant, number of pods per plant, pod length, neck/pod ratio and plant yield. This implicates that these traits were under the control of additive genetic effects, and could be effectively improved through selection. Plant yield had positive and highly significant correlation at genotypic and phenotypic level with number of pods per plant, plant height and neck/pod ratio.