Estimates of Heritability for Enhanced Storage Shelf Life and Early Maturity in Onions (Allium cepa L.)

Thirty-seven Onion (Allium cepa L.) genotypes comprising of twelve parents (12) and twenty-five hybrids were evaluated at the Fadama Teaching and Research farm of the Department of Crop Science, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto during the 2015/2016 dry season. The objective of the study was to estimate heritability, phenotypic coefficient of variation, the genotypic coefficient of variation and environmental coefficient of variation. The treatments were laid out in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. After harvesting, the genotypes were stored for five months under farmers practice. The analysis of the results indicated significant (P < 0.05) difference between the genotypes with respect to plant height, number of leaves per plant, leaf area, leaf area index, percentage bolting, days to maturity, bulb diameter, bulb height, average bulb weight, fresh bulb yield, cured bulb yield, and percentage weight loss after five months of storage. High phenotypic and genotypic coefficients of variation were observed. However, cured bulb weight recorded the highest values for both phenotypic (176.57%) and genotypic coefficients of variation (167.67%) followed by percentage bolting with 65.51 and 56.58% respectively. Days to maturity and plant height, on the other hand, recorded the lowest phenotypic coefficient of variation of (11.64 and 12.79% respectively) as well as genotypic coefficient of variation of 11.43 and 9.18% respectively. Percentage loss had the highest heritability (98.01%) while leaf area index had the lowest heritability of 14.11%. At the end of the research, it was concluded that all the characters were highly heritable with the exception of leaf area index.