Abstract

The inheritance pattern in economically important characters was studied in Bambusa bambos since the magnitude of heritability dictates the choice of selection method and breeding programme. Of the four characters studied, girth at breast height, total number of culms and number of new culms have shown low heritability. On the other hand, a low estimate of single tree heritability and a high family heritability for height during seedling stages decreased to zero on further development in the field. All the characters studied are highly correlated with one another making the productivity improvement easy. But none of the characters had any juvenile-mature correlation and hence, selection in the seedling stage based on growth performance will be futile. The phenotypic coefficient of variation was moderate for girth while the number of culms had high phenotypic and moderate genotypic coefficient of variation. The productivity of the crop can be improved by utilizing the