Genetic consequence through combining abilities for yield and its components traits of Brassica species

Abstract

The estimates of general combining ability effects suggested that among females GDM-4 and among males IC-399819 and EC-766060 were the best general combiners for seed yield and few other characters. The estimates of specific combining ability revealed that the hybrids GM-2 x EC-766437 followed by GM-2 x RH-406 and GDM-4 x EC-766378 exhibited positive sca effects in desirable direction for seed yield per plant. The hybrid GDM-4 x EC-766043 followed by GDM-4 x RH-749 and GDM-4 x EC-766495 exhibited significant negative sca effects for days to 50 per cent flowering and GM-3 x EC-766437 for days to maturity. While the hybrid GDM-4 x EC-766043 depicted significant sca effects in desired direction for oil and protein content. In general, involvement of both additive and non-additive gene effects, observed for most of the characters suggested that it would be desirable to follow cyclic method of breeding such as reciprocal recurrent selection, which would be most effective to stabilize additive genes to improve population mean and also to generate as well as to retain variability for several cycles of selection.