ESTIMATION OF HETEROSIS FOR YIELD AND ITS RELEVANT TRAITS IN FORAGE PEARL MILLET [Pennisetum glaucum L. R. Br.]

V.N. KAPADIA¹*, M.R. SAIYAD², A.M. RAIYANI³, K.C. BHALALA^4
1Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, B. A. College of Agriculture, Hadgood, Anand, 388110, Gujarat
²Main forage research station, Anand Agricultural University, Anand, 388110 Gujarat, India
³Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, B. A. College of Agriculture, Hadgood, Anand, 388110, Gujarat
⁴Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, B. A. College of Agriculture, Hadgood, Anand, 388110, Gujarat
* Corresponding Author : kapadiavn77@gmail.com

Received : 30-09-2016     Accepted : 18-10-2016     Published : 06-11-2016
Volume : 8     Issue : 54       Pages : 2829 - 2835
Int J Agr Sci 8.54 (2016):2829-2835

Keywords : Breeding, Standard Heterosis and per se performance
Academic Editor : Dr N Sasidharan
Conflict of Interest : None declared
Acknowledgements/Funding : None declared
Author Contribution : None declared

The objective of this research was to investigate heterotic effects between the crosses of selected lines. The pearl millet crosses were produced by crossing ten parents in L X T mating design. The female parents JMSA-101 exhibited the highest mean green fodder yield per plant followed by ICMA-01777 and ICMA-05888. The male parent AFB-4 exhibited the highest mean green fodder yield per plant followed by MJC-2 and MJC-8. The hybrids exhibited significant and positive heterosis over check (RBC-2) for green fodder yield and the hybrid ICMA-01777 X J-2500 exhibited maximum standard heterosis for green fodder yield per plant followed by ICMA-01777 X J-2290 and ICMA-01777 X MJC-2 and large number of crosses registered heterotic effects in negative direction. Most of the crosses had different ranking in per se performance for different characters, which suggested that crosses exhibiting high sca effects need not necessarily register either higher mean values or high heterotic effects and vice versa. Therefore, while favouring a cross for further advancement, one has to consider all the above aspects independently. The hybrids ICMA-05888 X J-2500, ICMA-01777 X J-2290 and ICMA-01777 X MJC-2 recorded highest per se performance.