Agronomic Performance, Genotype X Environment Interaction and Stability of Black Cumin Genotypes Grown in Bale, Southeastern Ethiopia

Twenty Black Cumin genotypes were evaluated across locations to assess their agronomic performance, genotype by environment interaction and seed yield stability during 2011 and 2012 at Sinana, Goro and Ginir in randomized complete design with three replications. Except the number of capsules per plant, the analysis of variance indicated that there was highly significant variation (p<0.01) among the genotypes in days to flower, plant height, primary branches, days to maturity, biomass yield and seed yield. The combined analysis of variance indicated that the genotype x environment interaction was highly significant (p<0.01) indicating that there is a need to know which component of the interaction is contributing to the variation. The genotype by environment interaction explained contributed to the majority (79.16%) of the variation while the genotype and environment respectively explained 19.72 and 1.12% of the total sum of squares. The variation is majorly contributed by the genotype x environment interaction than genotype indicating that there was substantial difference in genotypic response across environments. AMMI stability analysis revealed that all the four AMMI components are highly significant. The first and second principal components contributed 70.85% and 17.0% of interaction sum of squares respectively. The PCA1 and PCA2 had sum of squares greater than that of genotypes and cumulatively contributed to 87.86% of the total GEI. Based on the calculated AMMI stability value, BC-DM-9 was the most stable genotypes followed by ACBC- 6 and AC-BC-19. On the other hand, genotype AC-BC-10 was the most unstable followed by MAB-057, ACBC- 8, Local and AC-BC-4. AMMI biplot of seed yield indicated that BC-DM-11 Xereta-1, AC-BC-9 and MAB-018 expressed a highly interactive behavior while genotype 394640-539 showed low interaction and thus stable in its seed yield (kg/ha).