The present investigation was to estimate variance components, genetic parameters, broad-sense heritability, genetic advance and heterosis percentage for 9 agronomic traits of 142 bi-parent sugarcane family hybrids and 15 male parents used in this experiment.
The experiments were conducted at three representative locations at Nakhon Pathom (KS), Nakhon Sawan (KL), and Nakhon Ratchasima (KN) from November 2013 to March 2015.
Randomized complete block (RCB) design with 4 replications was employed. Results revealed that the variance components due to families and environments was relatively high, affectinghigherheritability in most agronomictraits, especially the floweringpercentage, stalk
diameter, brix, stalk number, and stalk weight. When considering both broad-sense
heritability and genetic advance, the mean percentage was relatively high in stalk number,
stalk diameter and flowering, which should be highly effective traits for direct selection within these families. There were nine significant family groups based on heterosis percentage for seven traits. Among the offsprings, the male parents had a clear expression pattern
which showed that the FG1 to FG4 came from the TByEFC energy-cane, while the FG5 to
FG9 obtained mainly from sugarcane. The family x trait biplot drawing showed that heterosis percentage on the family group F99 and F102 correlated highly to cane yield and brix yield.