Assessing of Heritability and Variance Components of Yield and Some Agronomic Traits of Different Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) Cultivars

This study was carried out to determine broad-sense heritability and variance components of seed yield and some components of safflower cultivars. The experiments were arranged in randomized blocks experiment designs with three replications in the 2000-2001 growing season in the East of Turkey. The twelve safflower cultivars were sown in the experimental area of Field Crops Department of Agricultural Faculty in Van ecological conditions. The broad-sense heritability values were determined for yield and yield components. According to the average results of the both experiment years, the maximum plant height (73.67 cm) and head diameter (32.12 mm) was obtained from cv. GW-9003, while the maximum heads/plant in (30.80 ) and seed yield (1737.50 kg ha-1) was obtained from cv. GW-9023. The primary branches/plant ranged from 5.75-7.30, seeds/head from 24.57 to 33.43 and 100-seed weight from 37.67 to 44.40 g in the safflower cultivars. The broad-sense heritability values of plant height, primary branchs/plant, heads/plant, head diameter, seeds/head, 100-seed weights and seed yield were calculated as 89, 76, 78, 81, 91, 91 and 92%, respectively.