Combining Ability in Eggplant (Solanum Melongena L.)

General and specific combining ability variances and effects for six characters were studied Involving seven parent varieties of eggplant in all possible combinations excluding reciprocals. General combining ability (gca) and specific combining ability (sca) variances were highly significant for all characters under study. The gca variances were higher for all the characters, suggesting the predominance of additive gene action. The gca effects indicated that none of the parents was a good general combiner for all characters, suggesting that separate parent will have to be used for improvement of different traits studied. The use of varieties Pusa Purple Long and Dotty is recommended for breeding programme, as they are expected to give high yielding performance. The predictability ratio is near unity for fruits/plant, followed by leaf area and days to flowering, suggesting greater importance of additive genetic variance for these characters.