Vol. 11, Issue 4 (2022)

Author(s):
Joshi SN, SS Desai, RL Kunkerkar, SV Sawardekar and AV Mane

Abstract:
A study was conducted to determine combining ability and association of yield and yield related attributes among crosses that were derived from five lines and three testers of red cowpea parents and fifteen hybrids. Hybrids and their parents were studied for the combining ability. The results indicated that general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (sca) were significant for certain characters indicating the importance of both additive and non-additive gene components. Twelve traits except days to initiation of flowering, days to maturity, pod length and number of grains per pod involved in the present investigation exhibited a ratio of σ²g / σ²s of less than unity thereby indicating the preponderance of non-additive gene action which can be improved through heterosis breeding indicating the presence of non-addictive gene action. Whereas, the remaining four characters viz., days to initiation of flowering, days to 50% flowering, days to maturity and pod length showed the σ²g / σ²s ratio greater than one which highlights the additive gene action and hence, can be improved through selection. All the characters under study exhibited high (30-60%) to very high (>60%) broad sense heritability, whereas, ten characters out of sixteen showed <20% narrow sense heritability indicating that the dominance proportion was too high to effect the overall heritability.