GENETIC VARIABILITY AND PATH COEFFICIENT ANALYSIS FOR YIELD AND YIELD RELATED TRAITS IN 4 VARIETIES AND 26 ACCESSIONS OF HOT PEPPER (Capsicum annuum L.) CULTIVATED AT TONY FARM, DIRE DAWA, ET

Chili (Capsicum annuum L.) is an important spice, an integral part of many cuisines and widely used foods in the world. To assess the magnitude and extent of genetic variability, and association of agronomic traits among some chili accessions and varieties and their contributions to yield, a field experiment was conducted using twenty six accessions and four varieties during the off-season period from November 2016 to May 2017 under irrigation. The experiment was conducted using RCBD design with three replications. The analyses of variances (ANOVA) showed highly significant differences nearly for all traits tested, except fruit girth, pedicel length and plant height. Among the yield components primary branch per plant, dry fruit yield per plot, fruit length, stem width, and number of fruit per plant had high GCV and PCV values along with high heritability and genetic advance as percent of mean. For all traits, phenotypic coefficient of variation was higher than genotypic coefficient of variation, indicating that there was environmental influence on these traits. High heritability along with high genetic advance as percent of mean was observed for primary branch per plant, stem width, fruit length, number of fruit per plant and dry fruit yield per plot. Plant height, primary branch per plot, days to fifty percent flowering, stem width, number of fruit per plant, fruit length, days to maturity and number of fruit per plant were positive and highly significantly correlated with dry fruit yield per plot at both genotypic and phenotypic correlation. Plant height (0.1081), number of fruit per plant (0.2610), fruit length (0.4293), stem width (0.4059), pedicel length (0.0122), days to maturity (0.0401) and internode length (0.0227) exerted positive direct effect on dry fruit yield per plot at phenotypic level. Genotypic path analysis showed that days to fifty percent flowering (0.0956), stem width (0.5867), fruit length (0.3671), plant height (0.0754), number of fruit per plant (0.2673) and internode length (0.0079)had positive direct effect. The direct effect of these characters on dry fruit yield per plot indicates that improvement on these traits may increase yield