PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF NINE ACCESSIONS OF QUINOA UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF MIDDLE REGION OF IRAQ

Abstract

Quinoa is one of the main food crops in Latin America. In recent decades it receives international attention because of its tolerance to a biotic stresses, the wide genetic variability, and its high nutritional value. This study was conducted to evaluated 9 accessions of quinoa for their adaptation to the local climatic conditions. The experiment was designed in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The results showed that there were significant differences among the accessions for plant height, days to physiological maturity, number of panicles per plant, panicle weight, thousand seed weight, seed yield per plant and seed yield per area unit. The accessions Q21 and Q22 registered the highest productivity with mean values of 957 and 933 kg.ha^-1 respectively. High estimates of genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation and broad sense heritability were observed in all of the studied traits. The genotypic correlations were higher than the phenotypic correlations for all the characters under study. Seed yield had positive and significant correlations at genotypic and phenotypic levels with all the traits except days to physiological maturity which had significant negative correlations. It was concluded that seed yield could efficiently be increased by obtaining maximum expression of number of panicles per plant, panicle weight, and thousand seed weight as an effective selection criteria. The study results also demonstrated that quinoa has a high adaptability under the conditions of middle region of Iraq.