Evaluation of hot pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) varieties for green pod yield and yield components in Western Tigray, Northern Ethiopia

A field experiment was conducted at Humera Agricultural Research Center experimental site for two consecutive years (2011/2012 and 2012/2013 cropping season) under irrigation condition to evaluate performance of hot pepper varieties for green pod yield and yield components in western Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. A total of six hot pepper varieties were used as test genotypes. Least Significant Difference (LSD) and Pearson correlation were used to compare treatment means and association of characters. Combined analysis of variance explained that all the traits except days to 50% flowering and days to 50% fruiting showed highly significant difference (pu003c0.01) among the varieties. Among the six varieties the highest marketable green pod yield was found from Jeju (19.47 t ha -1) which is statistically at par with marecofana (19.35 t ha -1). Marecofana scored the largest green pod weight (7.3 gram) followed by Jeju (6.2 g). Correlation analysis showed that marketable green pod yield per hectare had highly significant positive association with fruit yield per plant (r=0.705), single fruit weight (r=0.668) and fruit diameter (r=0.675) indicating that selection based on these trait improves marketable green pod yield of hot pepper in the specific agroecology. Key words: Humera, Jeju Marecofana, Pearson correlation.