ANALYSIS AND CORRELATION OF STABILITY PARAMETERS IN MALTING BARLEY

Barley (Hordeum dischon L. and Hordeum vulgare L.) is a multipurpose plant cultivated since ancient time for food, feed, medicinal purposes and malt of alcoholic beverages. Stability parameters are useful tools for identification of genotypes with specific and wide adaptations, and contrasting the role played by genotype, environment and G x E interaction in multilocational variety trials. Interaction principal component axis (IPCA) scores, Additive main effect and multiplicative interaction stability value (ASVi), Wricke‘s ecovalence (Wi), regression coefficient, coefficient of variation (CVi), genotypic/environmental variance (Si²), stability variance (si²) and cultivar/environment superiority measure(Pi) were used to evaluate the yield performance and stability of twenty malting barley genotypes in twelve rain-fed environments during 2005-2007. Spearman rank correlation showed that bj, Ri², Sj², CVj, and IPCA1 of environments were positively correlated, indicating that any of these five parameters can be used as a good alternative for stability evaluation. These stability parameters were positively correlated with mean yield of environments. The mean of genotype yields were positively correlated with stability parameters of bi and Ri² (P 0.01), but were negatively correlated with IPCA1, Wi², Pi (P 0.01) and ASVi. Based on these parameters, genotypes G1 and G13 combined high and stable grain yield, whereas the highest yielding genotype G12 was not stable.