Vol. 10, Issue 10 (2021)

Author(s):
Mahendra Kumar Yadav, DP Singh, IN Shukla, Satyendra Kumar, Bankey Lal and Vipul Pratap Singh

Abstract:
The present experiment was conducted to assess the nature of gene action for important fruit yield its attributing characters in pumpkin were determined by analyzing one 8 x 8 half diallel population. The significant values of D̂, Ĥ₁ and Ĥ₂ indicated the importance of both additive and dominance gene action in the expression of these traits, However, additive (a)genetic variance components were lower in magnitude than dominant component of genetic variance for all the nineteen traits in both generations which showed preponderance of dominance components of variance in expression of fruit yield and its attributing traits in both generations. The positive values of F̂ were found for all the traits except days to first female flower appearance, node number to first male flower appearance and number of seeds per fruit in F₁ and F₂ indicated that there was an excess of dominance gene in the inheritance of these traits among the parents. The average degree of dominance revealed the presence of over dominance for all characters in both generations (F₁, F₂). Ratio of genes with positive or negative effects in the parents were less than 0.25 in both generations for all characters which showed asymmetrical distribution of loci. The ratio of dominant and recessive genes in parents indicated that the dominant alleles were more frequent than recessive alleles for most of the traits studied in both generations. Number of gene groups was found less than one suggested that at least one gene group mainly governed the characters under study for most of traits.