HETEROSIS AND COMBINING ABILITY STUDIES IN A DIALLEL CROSS OF GRASS PEA (LATHYRUS SATIVUS L.) GENOTYPES FOR GREEN FORAGE YIELD AND ITS COMPONENT TRAITS
ANDREAN ALLWIN LYNGDOH, SEUJI BORA NEOG, AKASHI SARMA, KAUSHIK DAS AND PRIYANKA DAS
Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Department of Crop Physiology,
Department of Biochemistry and Agricultural Chemistry
Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat-785013 (Assam), India
*(e-mail : andrean123nem@gmail.com)
(Received : 28 October 2019; Accepted : 30 December 2019)
SUMMARY
A field experiment was conducted at the Instructional cum Research farm of Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat (Assam) during Rabi 2017-18 to evaluate genotypes for high forage yield coupled with low ODAP content. Seven diverse parental lines of grass pea were crossed in a 7×7 diallel mating design excluding reciprocals. The twenty one F1 hybrids obtained were evaluated along with their parents in a Randomised Block Deign with 3 replications. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the parents and the F1’s for all the characters studied. The studies on combining ability indicated the predominance of dominance variance for most of the characters studied except for days to 50% flowering and leaves per plant. The parent Prateek was the best general combiner for both green forage yield per plant and for low ODAP content. Based on SCA effect and per se performance the cross Nirmal × Prateek was the best specific combiner for green forage yield, while the cross Prateek × JCL-3 was the best specific combiner for low ODAP content. Significant heterosis was observed in desirable direction for most of the traits. From the estimation of heterosis over mid parent and better parent, the cross JCL-2 × JCL-3 was the best heterotic cross for green forage yield per plant while the crosses Prateek × JCL-3 was recognized as best heterotic cross for ODAP content.
Key words:Grass pea, heterosis, combining ability