Association Study and Direct - Indirect Effects of Characters for Yield in Rice (Oryza sativa L.)

The results indicated that the seed yield per plant showed a significant positive correlation with most of the traits like days to 50% flowering, plant height, filled grains per panicle, number of grains per panicle, spikelet fertility, flag leaf width, numbers of tillers per plant, number of effective tillers per plant, panicle length and 100 seed weight, representing the importance of these traits for development of great yielding varieties in contrast the trait spikelet sterility has been reported negative and significant association with yield trait and unfilled grains per panicle and flag leaf length reported a negative non-significant correlation with yield. Path coefficient analysis results showed that the direct positive effect on yield was recorded by the traits, effective tillers per plant, 100 seed weight, Number of grains per panicle, and most of the traits.