Combining ability for three important pod yield components in cowpea

Five parent half-diallel analysis involving genotypes of three cultigroups (Unguiculata, Biflora and Sesquipedalis) of cowpea was conducted to study combining ability for pod number/plant, pod lenngth and pod weight. Variances due to both gca and sca were highly significant for all the three pod characters. The estimated additive variances were higher in magnitude than the estimated non-additive variance for both pod length and weight, whereas estimated non-additive variance was much higher for pod number/plant. Heritability estimates in narrow sense were very high for pod length and weight but it was very low for pod number/plant. A close correspondance was observed between per se performance and gca effects of the parents. Considering significantly positive gca effects, Pusa Dofasli of cultigroups Unguiculata and Dumca Local-1 of cultigroup Biflora emerged as good general combiners for pod number/plant while Birsa Sweta and Check Barbati for pod length and weight. Best specific combiner was Pusa Dofasli x Dumca Local-1 for pod number/plant, Assam Local-1 x Dumca Local-1 for pod length and Assam Local-1 x Pusa Dofasli for pod weight.