Variability for self fertility in sunflower parental lines and hybrids evaluated over environments

Autogamy was studied in a set of 90 crosses and their parents viz. six CMS lines and fifteen restorer lines during spring 2005 in two environments. A wide range of variability for autogamy was observed among the parental lines as well as hybrids. Autogamy in the parental lines as well as in hybrids was affected by the environment to a great extent and it was observed to be genotype specific. The self-fertility of the hybrids was positively correlated with the self-fertility of the restorer lines in both the environments while the female parent did not have significant effect on the autogamy of the hybrids. Strong ‘S’ allele interaction was observed for realization of the autogamy in some of the hybrids.