Abstract

Thirty diverse genotypes of fenugreek were grown in six (E1 to E6) environments during the winter seasons at the Agriculture Farm of Visva-Bharati University, India. The estimates of genotypic and phenotypic coefficients (GCV and PCV) variation in all the environments were moderate for plant height and test weight, and high for branch number, pod number, husk weight, stem weight and seed yield indicating little influence of the environments on the estimates of these two genetic parameters. On the other hand, days to flowering, pod length, seeds per pod and harvest index showed changes in GCV and PCV values with the changes in environments. Pattern of consistency in heritability estimates over six environments revealed that days to flowering and test weight with high heritability were less influenced by environment; pod length and seed yield with moderate heritability were moderately influenced by environment; and harvest index with low heritability was highly influenced by environment. Estimates of heritability were more or less same in E1 and E2 while it changed from high to moderate for plant height, branch number, pod number and seeds per pod and from moderate to low for pod length, husk weight, stem weight and harvest index in other environments. This indicated that E1 and E2 exerted almost similar environmental effect on the genetic expression of the characters, which was supported by almost similar environmental indexes of E1 and E2 for different characters. Changes in heritability in the rest environments might be due to variable environmental effects on the expression of characters.

Key words: Environments, morphological characters fenugreek, heritability, Trigonella foenum-graecum, variability.