Abstract

Twenty-four parental lines of pearl millet and a seed parent (ZATIB) as check were evaluated in five different locations in northern Nigeria to determine their yield levels and stability across the environments. Identification of stable parental line(s) will improve the performance of resulting pearl millet hybrids. Location and genotype effects were highly significant (P<0.05) for all the parameters sampled while interaction between locations and genotypes were significant (P<0.05) for stand count, days to 50% flowering, downy mildew score, panicle length and grain yield (kg ha^-1). Estimates of environmental index showed that Samaru was the best performing environment while Bagauda and Panda were the poorest grain yielding environments. Most of the lines were adapted to high rainfall environment of Samaru while others showed specific adaptation to low rainfall locations; indicating the possibility of developing specific lines adapted to low and high rainfall areas. Mean grain yield ranged from 504.8 (kg ha^-1) for G3 (20A-2) to 1920 (kg ha^-1) for G24 (75B-3). G10, G14 and G15 were found suitable for favorable conditions with predictable performance as they gave high mean grain yield along with above average responsiveness (bi>1) and non-significant deviation from regression line while G13, G17 and G18 were considered suitable for poor environments. Regression coefficient and deviation from regression indicated that G23 and G24 (75A-3 and 75B-3) and ZATIB were most stable in performance across the test environments.

Key words: Genotype by environment interaction, pearl millet, parental lines, stability, yield components.