Estimation of Variance Components of Internode Mimulus Guttatus Length in a Cloned Population Of

a plant is vegetatively reproduced, or cloned, so that the same genotype can I;evelop in more than one environment, differences in a given character between the individuals of the clone reflect the effect of the different environments on the expression of the character. If a population of plants is cloned and randomly grown in a nonuniform environment, it is possible to estimate environmental and total genetic components of variation by evaluating the variation within and between clones. BURTON and DEVANE (1953) computed environmental and total genetic components of variance, and broad-sense heritability, for seven characters using replicated clones of several ecotypes of tall fesque. COOPER (1959) further refined the technique by using parent-off spring regression to estimate narrow-sense (additive) heritability of Lolium ear emergence, and by comparing broad-sense and narrow-sense heritabilities for evidence of nonadditive effects. It is the purpose of this study to further explore variance component estimation using clones, and to compare such estimates to independent estimates using more conventional designs.