Cause and Effect Relationship to Identify Important Yield Contributing Traits in Saffron (Crocus sativus L.)

The present investigation was carried out at Saffron Research Station Pampore, SKUAST-Kashmir during 2010. Fifty clones were planted in a randomized block design with three replications. Observations were recorded on 10 randomly selected and tagged competitive plants for 11 morphological, physiological, floral and corm attributes.viz, plant height (cm), number of radical leaves per plant, stomatal frequency, stomatal size (microns), chlorophyll content (%), number of flowers per corm, fresh pistil weight per corm (mg), pistil length (cm), stigma length (cm), number of daughter corms/ mother corm, and average weight of daughter corms per mother corm (g). The path analysis revealed that pistil length recorded highest direct effect towards fresh pistil weight followed by plant height and stigma length. Rest of the traits as number of flowers recorded weak positive direct effects and the negative direct effect of number of radical leaves plant?1 on the dependant variable. However in case of corm attributes in saffron (Crocus sativus L.), average weight of daughter corms/mother corm exerted negative direct effect on number of daughter corms/mother corm, while as size of stomata showed strong positive direct effect on number of daughter corms/mother corm.