Combining Ability Studies in Gladiolus-II

Combining ability analysis was carried out in gladiolus based on 8 × 8 full diallel, for five important traits, viz., number of florets per spike, spike length, number of corms per plant, weight of corms per plant and spike weight. Variances due to general combining ability highly exceeded the variances due to specific combining ability, for all the characters and were also significant. These high gca and sea values indicated that their inheritance was predominantly governed by additive and additive epistatic components of genetic variance. The varieties Oscar and Friendship were good general combiners for maximum characters, while, Meria Geretti and Tropic Sea were good general combiners for the number of corms per plant.