Inheritance of some quantitative characters in urdbean [Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper]

Six populations viz., P₁, P₂, F₁, F₂, B₁ and B₂ of six crosses involving eight parents were evaluated following compact family block design during zaid and kharif season in 2008 to study the mode of inheritance by using simple (A, B, C and D) and joint scaling tests. The nature and magnitude of gene effects for yield and its components in urdbean was also studied using six parameters model of generation mean analysis. The presence of epistasis was detected in 130 cases by simple as well as joint sealing test and inadequacy of additive-dominance model was established. Additive (d), dominance (h) gene effects along with one or more type of non-allelic interaction (i, j, l) contributed significantly towards the inheritance of all the quantitative characters in majority of the crosses. Duplicate type of epistasis was also prevalent in most of the cases with few exceptions. Thus, biparental mating may be suggested for improvement of urdbean populations.