Abstract:
The results revealed that the direct and indirect effects on yield exhibited variation from year to year, eg., plant density had a direct effect towards reducing the yield with a path coefficient of -0.314 in the year 1999, while this trait had a positive direct effect towards increasing the yield, in the other three years with path coefficients between 0.045 and 0.494. The trait seed weight per spike had positive effect on yield during 4 years of the trial. This trait generally had a positive effect on yield indirectly through other traits as well. Seed number per spike and plant height had direct negative effects. Plant density, seed weight per spike and thousand kernel weight increased the yield with the direct effect values of 0.312. 0.295 and 0.286, respectively, based on the average of four years. However, plant height and seed number per spike had negative effects with the values of -0.078 and -0.064, respectively.
