Characterization of Elite Upland Cotton Genotypes for Earliness and Yield Traits

Short duration cotton genotypes increased the chances to harvest crop before cold and rainy weather conditions. However, earliness in cotton is a difficult character, which is assessed by determining many plant traits. The current experimental was conducted at Cotton Section, A.R.I. Tando Jam, during kharif season 2013. The eight cotton genotypes including CRIS-342, Sindh-I, Haridost, Malmal, Bt-121, Bt-3701, TS-501 and Shahbaz were sown i n randomized complete block design with four replications. In a total, seven quantitative traits were measured such as days to first flowering, node number to set first sympodial branch, node number to set first flowering, sympodial branch length (cm), sympodial branches plant-1, number of bolls plant-1, seed cotton yield plant-1(g). The mean squares from analysis of variances showed that genotypes differed significant (P 0.01) for all the studied traits, demonstrating a vast genetic variability in tested genotypes. The genotypes, Sindh-1, CRIS-342, Bt-121 and Bt-3701 were characterized as early maturing or short duration cotton varieties. However, the correlation between yield and earliness traits were best criteria for developing the short duration cotton yield varieties.