Seed Oil Content, Yield and Fiber Quality Traits in Some Egyptian Cotton Genotypes

This work was done at Sakha Agricultural Research Station,during 2018 and 2019 seasons.The aim was evaluating cottonseed oil content,yield and its components and fiber traits of some Egyptian genotypes to improve seed oil content with the other economic traits during selection of new promising crosses.Eighteen extra-long staple genotypes were planted in a randomized complete block design with four replications.Traits studied were:Boll weight,seed cotton,lint and seed yields,lint%,seed index,fiber fineness,strength,length,length uniformity index,seed oil content and seed oil index. Results indicated high level of variability among genotypes in all traits.Most of traits differed significantly from one year to another;genotypes x years interactions were significant for some traits.Genotypes were divided into four groups according to their oil content:high,moderately high, moderately low and low oil content.Phenotypic and genotypic variances showed wide variability in the studied traits, moderate PCV values were recorded for seed cotton, lint and seed yields, GCV showed low values in all traits, suggesting the difficulty of manipulating these traits through plant breeding. Heritability recorded high values for: lint%, fiber fineness and seed index. None of the studied traits showed highexpected genetic advance under selection. Seed oil content and seed oil index showed positive significant correlation with seed index, fiber strength and length uniformity index, whereas correlation was significant negative with lint yield and lint%. The highest oil content was achieved by three genotypes "G.93 x [G.76 x(G.45 × sea Island)]", (G.93 x G.87) and Giza 92, the three genotypes might be used to improve oil content in Egyptian cottonseed.