Estimates of heritability for,and relationships between,root and shoot characters of white clover. I. Replicated clonal material

Summary A total of 749 genotypes from a number of white clover (trifolium repens L.) cultivars and populations, many collected from dryland areas, were cloned and grown in field titles. Several morphological characters, including leaf size, number and diameter of large nodal roots (taproots), and proportion of root weight that was classified as taproot were measured. There was large variation between lines and genotypes for all characters measured, and differences between genotypes within lines are also reported. Broad sense heritability estimates were higher (>0.5) for leaflet width, petiole length and stolon diameter, than for all root character heritability estimates which were between 0.2 and 0.4.