Assessment of heterotic potential and association analysis in direct and reciprocal hybrids for seed cotton yield and fiber quality traits involving lintless-fuzzless genotypes in upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum. L)

The present investigation focused on studying heterosis for yield and fibre quality traits among nine parents and their 36 hybrids developed through hybridization between six elite varieties as females and three fuzzless genotypes as pollen parent, along with their reciprocal crosses. Analysis of variance indicated the presence of substantial variability among the experimental materials for yield and fibre quality traits. The study indicated that the direct cross-hybrids generated using elite cultivars as female parents performed better than the reciprocal hybrids. The hybrids CO17 / AKH98-81, CO17 / TCH1646, CO14 / TCH1646 and MCU 5 / AKH 98-81 had recorded significant positive heterosis for a majority of traits including seed cotton yield and fibre quality. An association analysis revealed that seed cotton yield exhibited a positive and highly significant correlation with number of sympodia, number of bolls, boll weight, lint index, ginning out turn and all fibre quality traits. The analysis of the direct effect of various traits on seed cotton yield revealed that the traits like number of bolls, boll weight, number of seeds per boll, ginning out turn, fibre length, fibre strength, uniformity index, micronaire value and elongation percentage had expressed very high positive direct effects.