4.2.1. Genetic Components

The proposed index of 0–10% for low, 10–20% for moderate, and 20% for high variation was used to characterize the projected GCV and PCV values. In our experiment, closer PCV and GCV values were estimated in most of the traits which possibly were less influenced by the environment suggesting the reliability of selection based on these traits. The assessed 10 quantitative traits exhibited a wide range of variation and more or less similar results were observed by [48,53,56]. The selection procedure considers the differences between traits based on the degree of heredity. In order to understand the predicted selection

benefits, assessing genetic progress may be an important method for improving crops. Several studies have shown that selection can effectively use available genetic variations with a certain degree of heritability to improve specific traits [26,57]. The concern of both heritability and genetic advance is more effective over the distinctively use of heritability. We found that the phenotype variance values of all traits were higher than the genotype variance, indicating that the environment regulates the expression of traits. The same kind of outcome also was gained from several studies for various traits in eggplant [51,58–61].

The evidence of the traits having essential potential in the assortment process due to low environmental impacts was calculated using strong GA with hBS for all yieldrelated traits except DFF. Heterosis breeding has the potential to improve traits with poor heritability and genetic advance [28]. Regarding the hBS and GA index [62], which were greater than 60% for high, 30–60% for moderate, and 0–30% for low, we discovered that all traits were highly heritable together with a high genetic advance mean value except DFF, implying that direct selection can be effective for eggplant crop improvement based on these traits with the effect of additive genes; a more or less similar result was obtained by many researchers [63,64]. Due to the strong influence of the environment on genetic effects, low to moderate heritability and genetic advanced values will inhibit the improvement of traits. Therefore, effective selection can only be achieved by selecting higher values of GCV, PCV, hBS, and GA, which means that the influence of additive genes is more stable than the influence of the environment. High GAM was also observed for all traits except DFF. This revealed that if the selection was carried out for the next generation for these features, a greater improvement in the population mean may be seen.
