Development of Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) Hybrids Derived from Selected Inbreds under Drought Stress

Abstract

Due to the increased water shortage and frequent drought in Egypt, it is essential to develop drought-tolerant plants. Therefore, five drought tolerance lines ofokra were used to develop superior hybrids under drought conditions, using a half-diallel mating design to produce fifteen hybrids. There were significant differences among the hybrids and their parents in mean squares for all studied traits. The hybrids (P2XP6), (P2XP3), (P1XP2) and (P2XP4) exhibited the maximum mid- parents (MP) and better parent (BP) heterosis for total yield/plant.The mean squares for general (GCA) and specific combining abilities (SCA) were significant for studied traits, which indicates the importance of additive and non-additive gene actions in the inheritance of the studied traits in okra.The magnitudes of additive genetic variance (σ2A) were larger than their corresponding non-additive genetic variance (σ2D) for plant height, number of branches per plant, number of days to 50% flowering, pod length and total yield/plant. This revealed the major effect of additive inheritance for these traits.Genetic analysis illustrated that broad sense heritability (h2bs%) values were larger than their corresponding heritability in narrow sense(h2ns%) for all studied characters.As for the correlations between yield component traits, there were significant and positive genotypic correlation (rg) among total yield/plant and plant height, average pod weight and number of pods/plant. Overall, these crosses are promising hybrids with high yielding ability, and could be commercially recommended to improve economical traits in okra under drought conditions.