Heritability and correlation studies in wild apple geno-Types from different locations in Kashmir Valley

Thirty three wild apple genotypes were surveyed from different locations of Kashmir valley to assess the presence of variability for desired traits and amount of variation for different parameters. Phenotypic and genotypic variances, phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation, heritability, genetic advance genotypic correlation and cluster analysis were studied. Analysis of variance for the various traits under study revealed significant differences at genotypic level among the selections. The phenotypic variance and genotypic variance viz., (110.00% and 90.00%), phenotypic coefficient of variation and genotypic coefficient of variation (53.03% and 47.55%) were recorded highest for fruit weight and number of seeds/fruit. The estimates of heritability in broad sense and genetic advance (as percent of mean) were high for fruit weight (0.81, 87.92%), acidity (0.96, 96.20%), length of stalk (0.90, 93.99%), number of seeds (0.80, 87.85%), fruit length (0.86, 84.18%) and fruit diameter (0.89, 89.71%). The correlations among different traits like fruit diameter, fruit length and fruit weight showed a positive correlation, length of stalk showed positive correlation with leaf blade length, leaf blade width and negative correlation with fruit weight, number of seeds, petiole length. TSS and acidity showed negative correlations with each other and other traits.