Combining ability, heterosis and inbreeding depression for yield and yield components in yellow sarson

Combining ability, heterosis and inbreeding depression were estimated in yellow sarson for 11 quantitative characters. Nonadditive genetic variance was preponderant for all characters in both F₁ and F₂ generations except for 1000-seed weight in F₂ generation. The parents 66-197-3 and YSIK-742 in F₁ generation, and RAUYS-3 in F₂ generation were the best general combiners. For seven characters, the best F₂S on the basis of sea involves one parent with high gca effect and the other with poor or average gca effects. The hybrids which exhibited highest heterosis also showed higher inbreeding depression. Heterosis over better parent was highest for siliquae/plant (162.9%), followed by economic yield/plant (129.4%), biological yield/plant (118.7%), and primary branches/plant (88.1%).