Genetic Variability, Heritability and Character Association of Twelve Sugar Cane Varieties in Finchaa Sugar Estate West Wolega Zone Oromia Region of Ethiopia

Field experiment was conducted to estimate variability, heritability, and character associations for twelve sugarcane genotyp es for sprouting percentage, number of tiller and millable cane, internode length and cane height, cane yield, sugar percent cane, and sugar yield using completely randomized block design on luvisol types at Finchaa Sugar Estate of Ethiopia. The result indicat ed medium GCV and PCV for millable cane (15.32 and 17.30), cane yield (13.22 and 17.59) and low GCV and Medium PCV for sugar yield (8.73 and 15.05) while; low GCV for number of inter node (2.64), cane diameter (6.28) and sucrose % (8.19). The estimates for phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) were higher than for genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) in all the traits, indicating greater influence of environment on the expressed phenotype of the traits. However, the high GCV and PCV indicated that selection could be effective based on these characters and their phenotypic expression would be good indicatio n of the genotypic potential. Moreover, high heritability were recorded for characters such as cane yield (64.85) and millable cane (78.46); moderate heritability for interned length (56.28), plant height (46.50), stalk diameter (58.96) and sugar yield (33. 65), while low heritability were recorded for number of internodes (13.26). This confirms for traits that expressed high to medium heritability, simple selection would be effective method of sugar cane variety selection since these traits are highly herita ble from parents to progenies. On the other hand, analysis of character association showed that cane yield was positively and highly (P<0.01) significantly correlated with single cane height (r = 0.50**) and millable cane number (r = 0.57**) while positively and significantly correlated with inter node length, and cane diameter (r = 0.31*) and number of internode (r = 0.27*). Further, length of internode had positive significant correlation with plant height and sucrose %. However, on contrary, millable cane number was negatively and highly significantly correlated with sucrose % (r = -0.43**) and single cane weight (r = -0.26*). Negative correlation indicated their inverse relationship with each other. Therefore, more emphasis should be given on number of millable cane, cane height and those traits positively correlated with them, while compromising for traits negatively correlated with them during phenotypic selection for developing high yielding genotypes of sugarcane.