Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur-24
The present investigation showed higher specific combining ability variance than general combining ability variance for all the characters, except fresh fruit yield/plant, indicating the predominance of non-additive gene action for fruit yield/plant. Therefore, on the basis of gene action reciprocal recurrent selection should be adopted for the improving the yield potential of chilli. Parental lines namely, ‘7115’, ‘7103’, ‘6909’, ‘7109’, ‘5430’ and ‘7223’ were found to possess high g.c.a. effects for yield and its components in F1 and F2. It may be worth-while to subject the parents to diallel selective mating for fostering greater recombinations if simultaneous improvement of developmental characters related to productivity is sought. In screening of lines, g.c.a. variances and their effects appear to be more reliable as these were relatively more stable over the years. Parental performance itself was not necessarily a reliable criterion of genetic usefulness of a cultivar.
