ESTIMATES OF GENETIC COMPONENT OF VARIANCES AND GENETIC RATIOS FOR EARLINESS AND YIELD ATTRIBUTING TRAITS IN CUCUMBER

T.L. BHUTIA¹*, A.D. MUNSHI², A.K. SUREJA³, B. GURUNG⁴, S. HEROJIT SINGH^5
1Division of Crop Research, ICAR-Research Complex for Eastern Region, Patna, 80014, India
²Division of Vegetable Science, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, New Delhi, 110012, India
³Division of Vegetable Science, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, New Delhi, 110012, India
⁴Division of Forecasting, ICAR- Indian Agricultural Statistic Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India
⁵College of Horticulture, Central Agricultural University, Thenzwal, Mizoram, 796014, India
* Corresponding Author : kikila.bhutia@gmail.com

Received : 28-03-2018     Accepted : 05-04-2018     Published : 15-04-2018
Volume : 10     Issue : 3       Pages : 373 - 375
Genetics 10.3 (2018):373-375
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.9735/0975-2862.10.3.373-375

Keywords : F1 hybrids, Additive variance, Dominant variance, Narrow sense heritability, Cucumber
Academic Editor : Dr Alok Kumar Yadav, Dr Manish K Singh
Conflict of Interest : None declared
Acknowledgements/Funding : Author thankful to the Division of Vegetable Science, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, New Delhi, 110012 for providing necessary facilities to carry out the study
Author Contribution : All author equally contributed

An experiment was undertaken to study the estimates of gene action of 28 F1 hybrids involving 8 diverse parents in a half diallel fashion excluding reciprocals with three replications. Dominant variance was observed to be significant for all the traits viz., days to first female flower appearance, days to first fruit set, days to first fruit harvest, fruit length, fruit width, average fruit weight, no of fruits per plant and total yield while additive variance was significant for most of the traits except for number of fruits and total yield per plant indicating the importance of both additive and dominant variance for expression of the various traits in cucumber. However, dominance variance was observed to be higher than additive effect. The mean degree of dominance was also observed to be more than one for all the traits indicating over dominance except for average fruit weight which showed partial dominance. Narrow sense heritability was less than 50% for most of the traits except for fruit weight indicating predominance of non-additive gene action. It can be concluded that the traits which is governed by additive gene effect can be improved by pure line selection while traits where non additive gene action is prevalent heterosis breeding can be adopted for its improvement.

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