Diallel Analysis of Earliness in Pearl Millet

A diallel set involving nine inbred lines of pearl millet was grown in two seasons, i.e., off-season (February to June) and normal season (July to October) and scored for days to flower. The F₁ generation exhibited near complete dominance to overdominance of earliness. The V_r, W_r regression indicated a predominantly additive type of gene action, which was also supported by the highly significant D values in the two sowing seasons. The potence ratio, however, appeared to be somewhat inflated, probably due to complementary epistasis. Dominant genes were found to be more than recessive genes and were associated with less number of days, i.e., earliness. The number of groups of genes exhibiting dominance to some degree was nearly five. Three effective factors appeared to be responsible for the variation in the material under study. Heritability in the narrow sense was generally high in both the seasons.