Association among growth characters, yield and bulb quality in onion, Allium cepa L

An experiment was conducted to study the character association among bulb yield and related traits with ten varieties/lines of onion at the experimental plots, Division of Vegetable Crops, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. The varieties/lines differed significantly for most of the characters and relatively wide range of the mean for most of the characters indicated the existence of variation among the tested varieties/lines.  Total yield was significantly and positively correlated with bulb fresh weight, vertical bulb diameter, reducing sugars and weight of the bulb at phenotypic and genotypic level. These associations suggested that selection for these characters will be effective in improving yield.