Comparative predictive power of single-year vs. multi-year BLUPs and YREMs for herbage and essential oil yield in lemongrass (Cymbopogon flexuosus Stapf)

Cultivar recommendation for commercial scale cultivation involves evaluating several advanced breeding lines across multiple locations and years to identify the most promising and stable line(s). Theoretically, it is suggested that cultivars’ single-location multiple-year performance data has higher predictive power of their future performance than single year data. In the present study, we attempted to examine this hypothesis in 13 lemongrass clones evaluated across four years (2018–2021) at CSIR-Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Research Centre, Bengaluru, India for herbage and essential oil yield using the statistical predictors viz., best linear unbiased predictors (BLUP) and yield relative to environment maximum (YREM). Besides, we also identified stable and high herbage and essential oil yielding lemongrass clones using AMMI based stability parameters, mean BLUP and YREMs. The predictive power of single-year vs multi-year data was assessed by comparing the correlation co-efficients of the lemongrass clones’ current year’s performance with preceding 1-, 2- and 3- years’ performance. The results of our study indicated that the multi-year and single-year performance data were adequate to predict the lemongrass’ herbage and essential oil yield, respectively for future years’ performance and to identify superior clones. The clone B3 3–1 exhibited superior herbage and essential oil yield based on mean BLUP and YREM as measures of clones’ performance, besides exhibiting excellent stability as indicated by AMMI-based stability estimates. Further, evaluation of the clone 5 (B2 6–4) for stable herbage and essential oil yield performance across multi-locations shall aid in identifying a cultivar suitable for commercial cultivation.