Combining ability analysis for grain yield and its components in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)

Abstract

In the present investigation, seven chickpea genotypes and their twenty one crosses (excluding reciprocals) were grown at Post Graduate Institute Farm, Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth, Rahuri, in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications. Combining ability analysis was carried out in 7 x 7 parental half diallel fashion for grain yield and its components in chickpea. General combining ability and specific combining ability variances were highly significant for all the characters indicating importance of both additive as well as non-additive type of gene actions in the inheritance of studied traits i.e., days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, plant spread, number of primary branches per plant, number of secondary branches per plant, number of fruiting branches per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per plant, 100 seed weight and seed yield per plant. The parent Phule Vikram, JAKI-9218, Digvijay and GNG-2207 were high yielding with good general combining ability for grain yield per plant and some of its components, which can be used in future hybridization programme. Whereas, the crosses GNG-2207 X Digvijay, Digvijay x WR-315 and Phule Vikram x Digvijay recorded the highest sca effects. These crosses should be exploited for obtaining recombinants in advance segregating generations.