Combining ability analysis for yield and yield components in bread wheat

Abstract

Combining ability analysis was studied in a twelve parents of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Which were crossed in a diallel fashion (without reciprocals) and their 66F1’s were grown in a field experiment at Wheat Research Unit, Dr. P.D.K.V., Akola during in 2017-18 to study the combining ability for grain yield and its component traits. The gca and sca components of variances were significant for all studied characters. The (gca/sca) variances below unity in the generation showed the predominance of non-additive gene actions effects for all the traits. On the basis of general combining ability (gca) effect and per se performance, parents AKAW-5014 and AKAW-4924 emerged as good general combiners for grain yield per plant and average to high combiners for almost all the traits under study. Parent AKW-1071 was good general combiner for number of tiller/ plant and parents AKAW-5014 and AKAW-4924 also exhibited positive gca effects for days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of seed/earhead and grain yield. On the basis of sca effects, the crosses AKW-1071 xHPBW-01, AKAW-5017 x AKAW5014, AKAW-4924 x GW-322 and AKAW-5014 x WB-2 emerged as good specific cross combinations for grain yield per plot. Hybridization scheme for wheat improvement, such as multiple crossing or bi-parental mating could be useful in further manipulation of genes for economic purposes.