Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

An experiment has been conducted at the Agricultural Research Field of Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Rama University, Kanpur to estimate the extent of combining ability through the investigation of 18 F₁’s and 9 parents (six lines and 3 testers) in year 2022-23. The F₁s were generated by crossing 6 females (lines) by 3 males (testers) in a line x tester mating design during 2021-22. The trial has been conducted in randomized block design in three replication and the observations have been noted on the ten metric traits viz., days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, number of tillers per plant, plant height (cm), spike length (cm), number of grains per spike, biological yield per plant (g), 1000-grains weight (g), harvest index (%) and grain yield per plant (g). A perusal of the evidence that variances due to genotypes were found highly significant, which indicates the presence of genetic diversity among the genotypes for all the traits under study. For grain yield per plant, among female lines PBW677 (0.92) exhibited positive and significant GCA effects. Among female lines DBW110, DBW93 (1.80) and PBW677 (1.69) exhibited positive and significant GCA effects for number of grains per spike, however, among the male line MP3336 (2.74) showed significant positive GCA effects. Based on the magnitude of SCA effects for grain yield per plant cross combination DBW107×PBW343 (1.46) exhibited significant positive SCA effects. WH703 × PBD343 (4.59), DBW107 × MP3336 (4.26) and RUJ4037 × PBW343 (2.59) exhibited significant positive SCA effect for number of grains per ear, WH703 × PBW343 (1.18) and DBW110×MP3382 (0.77) exhibited significant positive SCA effects. Based on the present investigation it can be concluded that based on per se performance parents DBW110, PBW677 and PBW343 were identified as superior parents and crosses PBW677 x MP3382, DBW101 x MP3336, DBW107 x PBW343 and WH703 x MP3382 were identified superior for grain yield and other yield attributing characters.