Abstract:
Finger millet is grown in a wide range of agro-climatic conditions in Uganda and thus affected by an inevitable genotype x environment interaction (GEI) that affects performance of genotypes and therefore, effective selection. The objectives of the study were to: i) identify the best performing genotypes in terms of grain yield and blast disease resistance across environments, and in specific environments, and ii) evaluate the influence of genotype, environment, and genotype-environment interaction on grain yield. To achieve these objectives, 100 genotypes were evaluated in four environments with three replications in each environment. Analysis of variance and AMMI analyses were used to identify superior and stable genotypes, sources of stable resistance to blast disease, and least segregating environments. The grain yield results indicated highly significant (p ? 0.01) differences between environments, genotypes and genotype x environment interaction. On partitioning the GEI, genotype x location, genotype x season and genotype x location x season were all highly significant (p ? 0.01). From the AMMI analysis, genotype had the greatest effect accounting for 57.69%, GEI 32.27%, with environment main effects accounting for only 10%. This showed a higher variability among the genotypes and lower variability in the test environments. The highly significant (p ? 0.01) effect of environment from AMMI II analysis showed high differential genotypic responses across environments. Twelve genotypes were high yielding and stable, whereas thirteen were high yielding but unstable. Eleven genotypes exhibited stable performance with regard to blast resistance. Overall the study revealed that six genotypes, that is, G84, G4, G60, G95, G23, and G29 combined both stable high grain yield and stable resistance to blast disease. |
