Estimation of additive, dominance and digenic epistatic interaction effects for certain yield characters in pea

The components of gene effects for yield and five yield contributing characters were studied following six-parameter model of Hayman, utilizing means of six basic populations (P₁, P₂, F₁, F₂, BC₁ and BC₂) derived after crossing seven diverse cultivars of pea. The analysis reiterated the importance of dominance (h) gene effectfor yield/plant, pods/plant, and plant height. However, additive (d) effect was pronounced for yield/plant in the cross, GC 322 x B 5064, whereas all three types of gene effects (additive, dominance and epistatic interactions) were significantly involved in the crosses GC 322 x PG 3 and GC 322 x T 163 for this attribute. Among digenic epistatic interactions, additive x additive appeared to contribute more for most of the characters. Reciprocal recurrent selection is suggested for developing elite population for effective selection.