Evaluation of Seed Yield Stability of Promising Sesame Lines using Different Parametric and Nonparametric Methods

Analysis of genotype by environment interaction using different statistical methods is very important in plant breeding. In order to evaluate the seed yield stability of promising sesame lines using different parametric and non-parametric statistics, an experiment was conducted using 13 promising sesame lines with check variety Oltan at three locations of Karaj, Mashhad, and Moghan (Iran) in a randomized complete block design with four replications over two years (2016 and 2017). Combined analysis of variance for seed yield of promising sesame lines showed that the effect of genotype and the three-way interaction of genotype × year × location at the level of 0.01% probability were statistically significant. Karaj-96 environment with 1346 kg/ha and Mashhad-96 environment with 1001 kg/ha had the highest and lowest mean yield, respectively. The highest and lowest mean seed yield among genotypes in all test environments were related to G6 line with 1444 kg/ha and G12 line with 762 kg/ha, respectively. Heatmap along with cluster analysis divided both genotypes and stability parameters into three groups. Based on cluster analysis, genotype G12 was clustered into the first group, genotypes G1, G3, G7, G8, and G13 were clustered into the second group and the rest of the genotypes along with the check cultivar Oltan were clustered into the third group. The genotypes of the second group with the highest rank in most criteria of stability stasistics were stable compared to other genotypes and among them, the genotypes G8, G1 and G3 (with mean yields 1417, 1398 and 1291 Kg/ha, repectively) were selected and recommended in the test locations due to their average yield above the average yield of all genotypes.