Division of Vegetable Crops, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi-110 012.
The present study was undertaken on combining ability in pumpkin in a 10 × 10 diallel cross excluding reciprocals. Nine important characters including total yield per plant were studied. The mean squares for g.c.a. were larger than those for s.c.a. in all characters except days to open first male flower. The estimated components of variance for s.c.a. (aa sij) were larger than those for g.c.a. (a2 gi) in all the characters except in vine length. This indicated that the superior performance of F1 hybrids showing high s.c.a. was largely due to epistasis interaction. The F1 hybrid S. 93 × Cm-12 was the best specific combiner for total yield per plant and second best combiner for number of fruits per plant and fruit weight.
