Evaluation of Wide Range of Foxtail Millet (Setaria italica L) Germplasms of Based on Yield and Some Agronomic Traits

 Foxtail millet, as a multi-purpose crop, enjoys nutritious and remedial properties. This research was aimed at identifying diversity and the investigated based on 14 agronomic traits in a wide range of foxtail millet germplasms (134 genotypes).

 In this research a total of 134 seeds of foxtail millet genotypes corresponding to a wide range of foxtail millet germplasms were procured by Research and Technology Institute of Plant Production (RTIPP) affiliated to the Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. This experiment was designed as a randomized complete block with three replications under normal condition in 2017. Agronomic traits include: seed germination percentage, plant height, number of leaves per plant, flag leaf length, flag leaf width, number of tillers, panicle length, seed yield, number of plants per line, forage yield, seed weight of superior plant, 1000-seed weight , Harvest index and biological yield were measured  and the data were then analyzed.

 Analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that the differences between the studied genotypes were significant for all traits except for flag leaf width and the number of plants on the line was significant. According to the phenotypic correlation coefficients, the seed and forage yields had positive and significant correlations with all investigated traits except for the flag leaf width.
Also, the seed yield had the highest correlations with forage and biological yields (0.97 and 0.94, respectively). Then, principal components analysis showed that the first four main principal components could justify explained more than 75.62% of the total variance of the traits, and the first to fourth components explained 49.89, 9.87, 8.32, and 7.54% of the total variance, respectively. Based on the cluster analysis, all genotypes were categorized into four groups. Compared to other groups, the first group of genotypes had superior seed and forage yields.

 In general, genotypes had significant differences in terms of the investigated traits. These results indicated the presence of a wide range of diversity in the investigated germplasm of foxtail millet. Besides, the common genotypes held in the first group (G160, G68, G15, G23, G72, G73, G39, G170, G57, G122) had significant superiority in terms of seed and forage yields under condition.Therefore, they can be considered and used for future studies of plant breeding as superior genotypes in breeding and selection programs in order to increase the forage and grain yield of fox tail millet.