COMBINING ABILITY FOR YIELD COMPONENTS AND OIL CONTENT IN SESAME

Abstract

The 8 x 8 diallel analysis in Fl generation without reciprocals in sesame revealed that the variances due to gca and sea were highly significant denoting importance of additive and nonadditive gene actions for all the eight traits. The estimated components of sca variances were higher in magnitude for all the traits, indicating the predominance of nonadditive or dominant gene action for the traits. The parents Vinayak and SP 1162 were good general combiners for most of the characters, Type 12 for seeds/capsule, oil content and number of branches, and Pratap for number of capsules, plant height, oil content, days to flower/maturity, and number of branches, which could be utilized in hybridization programme. The specific crosses Pratap x Vinayak, Pratap xTC 25, Type 12 x N 32, Vinayak x SP 1162, Type 12 x SP 1162, and N 32 x ES 22 appeared to be good for seed yield and most of the contributing characters. For improvement of the crop, adoption of sU'l.table methods exploiting additive and nonadditive gene effects is suggested.