Heterosis And Combining Ability Studies in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L. Em. Thell)
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Date
1996
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Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi
Abstract
Wheat (Triticum spp.) is one of the most important winter cereal in India contributing as one third to the total food grain basket of the country.
The present study is an attempt to analyses and to understand the genetic system especially in respect of inheritance of some important quantitative characters. The field experiment was conducted during rabi season 1994-95, in a randomized block design with three replications at the experimental field of Birsa Agril. Univ. Ranchi. The experimental material consists of 44 Fi's (derived from 11 x 4, 1ine x tester mating design) and 15 parental lines. The characters studied were days to 75% flowering, plant height (cm.), spike length (cm.), number of spike par plant, days to 75% maturity, number of grains per spike, grain weight per spike (gm.), 1000 grain weight (gm.), biological yield per plant (gm.), grain yield per plant (gm.) and harvest index (2). The analysis of data for general and specific combining ability was done following the method given by Kempthorne (1957), besides other statistical analysis.
A wide range of variability among the different genotypes was observed in almost all the characters. The analysis of variance revealed that there was the significant difference among parents and crosses for all the characters under study. The high estimate of heritability was shown by days to 75% flowering, spike length, days to 752 maturity, biological yield per plant and grain yield per plant, among the parents, as well as among the crosses. The same characters also showed high genetic advance and higher or moderate genetic advance of mean.
In the heterosis study almost all the crosses showed high heterosis over mid parent, better parent and standard variety for the characters days to 75% flowering and days to 752 maturity and many crosses showed high heterosis for plant height, spike length, number of spikes per plant, number of grains per spike, grain weight per spike, 1000-grain weight, biological yield per plant, grain yield per plant and harvest index.
In the combining ability analysis most of the parents showed significant values for most of the characters. The parent KG 128 followed by HD 2402 and BAUW54 were observed good combiners. The dominance of additive and non-additive gene effects were observed in all the characters. Non additive gene effect was predominant in almost all the characters.