Association among sunflower yield contributing traits in various ecological conditions

Abstract

Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is one of the most important oil crops in the world. The objectives of this study were to perceive the association between important oil yield related traits and to evaluate different types of sunflower genotypes on the basis of these selected traits. The experiment was carried out during three years at experimental field Rimski Šančevi. Testing included 30 different sunflower genotypes developed at Institute of Field and Vegetable Crops, Novi Sad, Serbia. The associations among the observed traits and genotypes evaluation were studied using genotype-by-trait biplot analysis. Associations between observed traits were very similar in all three years of testing. Biplot revealed strong positive association among oil yield, seed yield and head diameter, as indicated by the acute angles between their vectors. These vectors were perpendicular to vector of oil content, pointing to zero association. Oil yield was weakly positively associated with thousand seed weight, seed set efficiency and number of flowers. Total absence of association in all three years was recorded between number of flowers and thousand seed weight. Obtuse angle between vector of seed set efficiency and vectors of oil content and number of flowers pointed to negative association.