Combining ability study on grain yield and its components from line x tester analysis over the locations of five well adapted CMS lines and twenty three testers of different eco-geographic origin revealed higher SCA variance than GCA variance for all the traits indicating the prevalence of non-additive gene action. The lines APMS 6A, PUSA 5A and CRMS 32A and testers 1096, 1005, IBL-57 and SC5 9-3 were the good general combiners for yield and its majority of the traits. IBL-57 was the only good general combiner among the male parents for earliness, dwarfness and grain yield per plant. The hybrids APMS 6A x SC5 9-3, APMS 6A x 1005 and APMS 6A x GQ 25 were identified as potential one for yield and desired traits based on sca effects.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Genetic divergence among 41 commercial Yardlong bean genotypes was investigated to select the parents for hybridization using Mahalanobis D 2 statistics. The genotypes fall into seven clusters. Cluster VI had the maximum (12) and cluster VII had the minimum (1) number of genotypes. The intra cluster D 2 value ranged from 0.00 (Cluster II, III, VI, VII) to 121.69 (Cluster V). The cluster V had the maximum D 2 value (121.692) followed by Cluster IV (77.305) and Cluster I (46.391). The inter cluster D 2 values of the seven clusters revealed that highest inter cluster generalized distance (607.945) was between cluster V and cluster VII, while the lowest (15.917) was between cluster II and cluster III. Regarding relative contribution of different traits towards divergence, pod length (48.66%) contributed maximum followed by pod ascorbic acid content (20.00%), pod girth (12.20%) and 100 seed weight (12.20%) among Yardlong bean genotypes. Based on genetic distances and clustering pattern, the most divergent genotypes identified are IC-582859, NSJ-362, IC-582850, IC-582872, IC-582851 and IC-582829 from III, V, and VI clusters could be used as best parents on crop improvement programme to produce desirable segregants for yield and yield attributes in Yardlong bean.