Identification of promising and stable genotypes of oat (Avena sativa L.) for green fodder yield under varied climatic conditions of north-western Himalayas

Abstract

The present investigation was undertaken to determine the stability of oat genotypes for green fodder yield under varied environmental conditions prevalent in northwestern Himalayas. A total of 121 genotypes including five checks were evaluated during three cropping seasons (Rabi 2014-15 to 2016-17). The stability was estimated using Eberhart and Russell model for six traits viz., plant height, leaves per plant, tillers per plant, flag leaf area, leaf: stem ratio and green fodder yield per plant. The pooled analysis of variance showed differential behavior of genotypes over the environments. The most stable genotypes identified for plant height, leaves per plant, tillers per plant, flag leaf area and leaf: stem ratio were JPO-35, IG-03-254, JPO-31, JPO-44 and IG-03-250, respectively. However, the promising and stable genotypes for green fodder yield identified were SKO-28, JHO-822, Oats-902 and IG-03-214. Thus, the genotypes found stable and well adapted to all the types of environments could be exploited as elite gene pool in future breeding programme, where aim is to develop high yielding and stable genotypes over environments or could be further tested in multilocation trials to be released as a cultivar.