Combining ability analysis for yield and its component characters in triticale

A 10 X 10 diallel combining ability analysis showed that gca and sca variances were significant for all the characters except yield/plant for gca and number of tillers/plant for sca effects. The parent variety DTS 1112 was the best general combiner, followed by DTS 1227. Parent DTS 1112 is a good general combiner for plant height, spike length, spikelets/spike and 100-grain weight and DTS 1227 for spike length, 100-grain weight and yield/plant. In general, in the expression of high scaeffects, all the combinations of parents, namely those with high X high, high X low and low X low gca effects were involved. For improvement of the crop, reciprocal recurrent selection is suggested as it can exploit both additive as well as nonadditive gene effects.