Associations between morphological and agronomic characteristics in garlic crop

Correlations and path analysis between characteristics can aid the selection of important attributes in breeding programs. Thus, the objective of this work was to perform genotypic, phenotypic correlations and path analysis under commercial yield of garlic bulbs, depending on morphological and agronomic variables. The experiment was carried out in 2017 at the Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri and Universidade Federal de Lavras, using ten garlic genotypes, eight trials and two commercial cultivars, Cacador and Jonas. We evaluated: plant height; number of leaves, total bulb number; total bulb mass, total bulb yield, marketable bulb yield and number of cloves per bulb. The genotypic and phenotypic correlations were positive and significant between marketable yield of bulbs with bulb mass, total yield and number of cloves per bulb, indicating that selection based on these characteristics will help increase the yield of garlic. However, only the number of cloves per bulb had a direct effect and a relevant indirect effect on the marketable yield of garlic.