Combining ability and gene action in cucumber (<em>Cucumis sativus</em> L.)

Abstract

The experimental material for the present study comprised of F1 population of twenty four crosses, developed by crossing four female parents viz., Sheetal, Shubhangi, Himangi, and Puna khira of cucumber with six male parents viz., AAUC-2, DC-2, AAUC-1, VRC-19, DARL-103 and Fansu local. The experiment was laid out with 24 F1s, 4 females 6 males and one check Konkan kakadi in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with two replications during the kharif 2017.Observations were recorded on thirteen different quantitative characters The perusal of estimates of gca effects revealed that two female parents viz., sheetal (0.572), Puna khira (0.235) and two male parents Fansu local (0.596) and VRC-19 (0.376) exhibited significant positive gca effect in kharif 2017. This showed that these parents were good general combiner for the marketable yield vine-1. The best three hybrids with respect to marketable yield vine-1based on significant positive sca were viz., Sheetal x Fansu local (0.942), Shubhangi x DC-2 (0.532), Puna khira x VRC-19 (0.484). A perusal of the data indicated that the estimates of σ2SCA were higher in magnitude as compared to σ2 GCA (average) both in females and males for the traits under study viz., days to first male flower appearance, days to first female flower appearance, nodal position of first female flower, days to first picking, fruit length and diameter, average fruit weight, marketable yield vine-1, harvest duration and total soluble solids. In all the traits studied, the SCA variances were higher than GCA values, indicated the role of non-additive gene action.While lower magnitude of SCA showed additive gene action. The heritability estimates from different variance components having very high heritability obtained for number of marketable fruits vine-1 (69.02%) and number of primary branches plant-1 (94.40%).