Electronic Journal of Plant Breeding

Present experiment was conducted with five male sterile lines (female parents) and nine testers (male parents) of pearl millet in line x tester fashion. Both GCA and SCA variances were highly significant for all characters. The predictability ratio of GCA and SCA revealed preponderance of non-additive genetic variance for all the characters. The parents like J2340, J-2555 and J-2552 were identified as good general combiners for grain yield per plant and some other components. Majority of their crosses had also displayed significant and desirable sca effects, coupled with high per se performance for grain yield per plant. The hybrids viz., JMSA₁ 20141 x 81-SB-14, ICMA₄ 10444 x J-2555 and JMSA₅ 20142 x 150SB-14 were recorded the significant sca effect in desirable direction for grain yield and some other important characters. Thus, these hybrids can be commercially exploited through heterosis breeding programme after testing in multi-locational trial to work out its stability and diseases screening trials to find out its resistance capacity against major pearl millet diseases in order to achieve hybrids with high grain yield in pearl millet.