Studies on choice of characters for breeding for seed cotton yield and fibre quality traits in cotton.

Correlation studies of various important fibre quality characteristics and yield components with seed cotton yield per plant in 10 parents, 21 hybrids and two checks revealed that seed cotton yield was positively and significantly associated with plant height, number of sympodial branches per plant, number of bolls per plant, lint index and seed index. Whereas days to first flowering and days to 50 per cent flowering manifested negative and significant relationship with seed cotton yield per plant. In path coefficient analysis, number of bolls per plant showed maximum positive direct effect followed by boll weight, number of sympodial branches per plant and ginning out turn. Number of sympodial branches per plant exerted high positive indirect influence via number of bolls per plant towards seed cotton yield per plant. Hence, greater selection emphasis should be laid on taller genotypes with more number of sympodial branches per plant and bolls per plant for improvement of seed cotton yield