Agricultural Science Digest - A Research Journal

Combining ability effects were estimated for different characters in a line x tester crossing programme comprising 45 crosses produced by crossing of 15 lines and 3 testers. Parents and hybrids differed significantly for gca and sca effects, respectively. High average degree of dominance revealed predominance of non-additive gene effects for all the traits. The parents Swati-10 (L₉), Heritage green (L₁), Punjab Padmini (L₄), Ankur-40 (L₁₁), VRO-6 (L₁₃) and Arka Anamika (T₃) were good general combiner for majority of characters in different environment. Therefore, these lines can be used for hybridization for producing promising recombinants. This indicates that parent showing high gca for fruit yield per plant might be due to high gca for fruit weight, fruit length, fruit girth and number of fruits per plant. High sca effects were expressed for cross combinations, L₃ x T₃ (BO-3 x Arka Anamika) in E₁, L₉ x T₁ (Swati-10 x Parbhani Kranti) and L₁ x T₂ (Heritage Green x Arka Abhay) in E₂ and L₃ x T₁ (BO-3 x Parbhani Kranti) in E₃ environments.