Genetic variability and heritability in commercial tenera oil palm

Abstract

Vegetative characters and yield components are quantitative traits which environmental strongly effects on the expression of them. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of commercial tenera oil palm, genetic variability and broad–sense heritability (h²_b) as well as phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation for vegetative characters, such as leaf area (LA), leaf dry weight (LDW) and rachis length (RL), and bunch yield, such as fresh fruit bunch (FFB), bunch number (BN), average bunch weight (ABW) and oil yield (OY). Six commercial tenera oil palm progenies were planted at Oil Palm Collection Center, the Chaipattana Foundation at Trang province. The experiment was arranged in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. Data were collected from each commercial tenera oil palm after field planting for one year. The result showed that vegetative characters and bunch yield had significant difference among the progenies, except OY and FFB. Progeny CT-5 revealed the highest LA, LDW and RL, while progeny CT-4 gave the highest OY, FFB and BN. The broad–sense heritability showed that LDW, LA, BN and ABW were high (80.18, 77.79, 69.91 and 69.07%, respectively). Moderate broad–sense heritability was observed in RL (47.21%). These characters have high genotypic coefficient of variation to phenotypic coefficient of variation ratio. These results indicated genetic effects on the expression of characters rather than the environment. Our results can be useful in oil palm breeding programs.