the heritability of yield and morphological traits of clones satureja rechingeri jamzad

satureja rechingeri, belonging to the family lamiaceae, has been recently used in the pharmaceutical industry due to its high level of carvacrol in the essential oil. the domestication and breeding of suitable s. rechingeri variety has been started since few years ago in iran. the initial screening of natural populations, grown in the same environment, was performed and 58 talent clones were selected. in the present study, half-sib (hs) progenies of the 58 parent clones were obtained by polycross and were evaluated in a randomized complete block design (rcbd) with six replications. different production biological traits as plant height, main branches number, lateral branches number, leaf width and length, fresh and dry weight, dry weight of leaves and flowers and essential oil content and yield were evaluated at full flowering stage. narrow sense heritability values based on measurement at the individual plant level (h1) and based on plot mean (h2), additive variance and general combining ability were calculated for each trait. highest narrow sense heritability was observed for plant diameter, plant height and main branches number while lowest value was obtained for the number of lateral branches. additive variance was significant for main branch number, fresh weight, and dry weight, weight of leaves and flowers and plant height. by selection of 20 percent of the half-sib families, based on general combining ability for essential oil yield, families of f27, z12, z37, f14, e59, e37, z26, z28, k56 and g27 clones can be selected as parents of a synthetic variety.