Estimation of Heterosis and Combining Ability Effects for Yield and Fiber Quality Traits Incotton (Gossypium Hirsutum L.)

Abstract

Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is an important cash crop worldwide, including Pakistan. Cotton is the fibre crop that plays a vital role in Pakistan's economy. Cotton devotes a major part to enhancing foreign exchange earnings and contributes 65 percent of total annual earnings by exporting the raw material and finished products of cotton. Identifying the parents with higher yield contributing traits is essential to enhance the economic yield. The diallel mating design was used because it is the best tool to discriminate between good and bad combiners. All crosses showed significant results except the number of monopodial branches, internodal distance and first fruiting branch node. Traits that showed significant variability were further analyzed for combining ability effects and gene action related to yield contributing traits. From parents NIAB-777 and Tipo-1 showed superior general combiners for most of the traits. Among the crosses NIAB-777 × Tipo-1, C-1 × Tipo-1 and C-1 × Shahkar exhibited high SCA. SCA variance for most of the genotypes was better than GCA and RCA variance. The information devised is really helpful in selecting suitable parents and hybrids for further breeding programs.

Diallel Crosses of Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.)—Enhancement of Fiber Properties in Future Cultivars for Burkina Faso

“…Our results were consistent with those from Meredith and Bridge [29], Singh and Chahal [30], Karademir and Gencer [13], Bolek et al [22] and Khan et al [31] as they showed higher GCA effects than SCA effects, indicating large additive gene action against little non-additive gene action in the control of the UHML, UI, SFI, Elo and +b. Raiz et al [32] reported both GCA and SCA significant effects, with the GCA values being somewhat superior to the SCA values. Palve [27] found only GCA variance significant but not SCA variances for the main fiber properties in his study, including fiber length, micronaire and strength.…”

“…In respect to their potential as parents (GCA), the progenies BK1xTX2, BK5xTX2, BK5xTX1 and BK4xTX1 (Table 5) resulted in traits in opposite to desired direction because they inhibited positive effects from the male parent. Similar results were reported for older American cultivars for agronomic traits, even for these same TX2 and TX1 genotypes [8,32].…”