Heterosis and combining ability studies in chillies

To estimate heterosis and combining ability, six chilli varieties (LCA 206, LCA 1079, LCA 960, LIC 13, X-235 and G 4) were crossed in a half diallel. Involvement of both additive and nonadditive gene actions was detected for days to 50% flowering, days from fruit set to fruit maturity, fruit length, fruit girth, fruits/plant, fresh fruit weight, 100-dry fruit weight, and 100-seed weight with greater predominance of nonadditive gene action. Taking into consideration the per se perfomlance, sca effects and heterosiS, LCA 206 x LCA 960 was the best hybrid, yielding 638.3 g/plant, followed by LCA 206 X LA 1079 (535.2 g/plant). The varieties LCA 960, LCA 206 and G 4 were the best general combiners for majority of the characters, which gave high gca effects for yield/plant with positive and significant gca effects for many of the yield characters. Out of the 13 characters studied, the manifestation of heterosis over midparent was maximum (upto 160.3%) for number of branches/plant.