Effects of reduced plant height on breeding requirements and ...

DISCUSSTON
C.onponents <strong>of</strong> Variance and. Heritability Estimates
These values were determined to establish whether
hybrids involving <strong>reduced</strong> <strong>plant</strong> <strong>height</strong> would lead to changes
in the breeding behavj-our <strong>of</strong> other agronornic parameters,
since previ_ous i¡vestigations have deal-t primarily with
standard <strong>height</strong> materiafs. Furthermore, a desire existed
to determine the heritability <strong>of</strong> the neasured characters,
in order to speculâte upon the optimum testing procedures
required to select genotJ¡pes with desired revels <strong>of</strong> these
traits fron barley populatÍons.
fhe signiflcance <strong>of</strong> the various genotype by environment
interaction components and the magnitudes <strong>of</strong> the herítability
estimates for the traits studied are in general agreenent
wíth previous reports, in particular those <strong>of</strong> Rasmusson and
GLass (1962) and Rutger et at. (1966). Invotving <strong>reduced</strong>
plani <strong>height</strong> apparently did not appreciably alter the overall
breeding behaviour <strong>of</strong> the other characteristics in the
present study.
The design <strong>of</strong> this study had two replications at each
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