Estimates of Genetic Components of Variation for Earliness and Yield Traits in Garden Pea (Pisum sativum L.)

Abstract

A study of fifty five F1 hybrids of garden pea (Pisum sativum L.) in a half diallel set involving eleven parents were conducted in a Randomized Block Design with three replications. Over-dominance was found for all the characters which indicated predominance of non-additive gene action for the inheritance of these characters. The positive value of F in all the characters showed preponderance of dominant alleles in parents. Dominance effect (H) was found to be higher than additive effect (D) for all characters except plant height & days to 50% flowering and average degree of dominance was more than one for all the characters, confirmed the predominant role of non-additive gene action. For all traits narrow sense of heritability was less than 50% except plant height and days to 50% flowering, which suggests the preponderance of non-additive gene action and commercial exploitation of recombinant breeding for improvement of these characters.