Estimation of heterosis for yield and quality traits in short durations pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Mill.)

Abstract

To ascertain heterosis twenty eight hybrids were developed from eight parents in a half diallel mating design during kharif, 2022-23 and tested in a Randomized Block Design with three replications during kharif, 2023-24. The analysis of variance revealed that the mean sum of squares due to genotypes, parents and hybrids were significant for all characters whereas the mean sum of squares due to parents vs. hybrid were significant for all characters except plant height, pod length and harvest index. This indicates the presence of sufficient amount of variability in parents utilized for hybridization in pigeonpea. This indicates that there is good chance of exploit the heterosis from present investigation. The estimates of heterosis for seed yield per plant showed that the three hybrids viz., ICPL-20338 x ICPL-20340, ICPL-20340 x AL-882 and ICPL-20338 x AL-882 were found the most promising on the basis of per se performance and standard heterosis for yield and yield contributing traits like biological yield per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seed per pod and 100-seed weight. Therefore, it needs to be exploited in future breeding programme.