Analysis of combining ability in cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) through half diallel mating system

It is a well-known fact that speedy improvement of genotypes can be brought about by assessing their genetic variability and exploitation of heterosis, in crops which are amenable to the development of F₁ hybrid cultivars, such as cucumber. But selection of parents on the basis of their performance does not necessarily lead to fruitful results rather, they are better selected based on their combining ability effects. Therefore, this study was conducted at Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand with the objective of estimating the general (gca) and specific combining ability (sca) effects from a group of eight parental lines and their 28 F₁ hybrids of cucumber for important horticultural traits. The eight parental lines were PGC-1, PCUC83, PCUC-25, PCUC-8, PCUC-28, PCUC-15, DC-1 and PCUC-78. The results indicated that none of the parents showed consistently good gca effects for all the traits, simultaneously. However, PCUC-25, PCUC-15, and PCUC-83 were found to be good general combiners for most of the economic traits including number of fruits and fruit yield per plant. Again, none of the crosses expressed high sca effects for all the traits, simultaneously. However, the crosses PCUC-83 X PCUC -25, PCUC-83 X PCUC-15, PCUC-25 X PCUC-15 and PCUC-8 X PCUC-15 were found to be consistently good specific combiners for most of the economic traits including number of fruits and fruit yield per plant.