Heterosis and Combining ability in Sathputia (Luffa hermaphrodita)

Abstract

The present study on heterosis and combining ability for yield and its components was carried out in a set of 15 hybrids (F1s) of Sathputia obtained from a line x tester method involving 8 diverse parents at ICAR-IIVR, Varanasi (U.P.). The heterosis for yield per plant was highest in VRST-2 x VRST-16 (121.74%) followed by VRST-62 x VRST-16 (108.20%) and VRST-57 x VRST-53 (86.30%). Other traits like days to germination (VRST-2 x VRST-61), days to flowering (VRST-57 x VRST-53) and days to first harvesting (VRST-2 x VRST-66) also expressed significant heterosis over better parent. For number of cluster/plant and number of fruits/cluster, hybrid VRST-62 x VRST-53 and VRST-57 x VRST-16 expressed maximum heterosis, respectively.ought of eight parents VRST-2 was the best general combiners as it showed maximum and significant gca effect in the desired direction for most of the traits. The gca and sca variances were highly significant for all the traits studied except for number of fruits/cluster. The ratio of the genetic variance was less than unity, which indicated the predominance of non-additive gene action in all the traits thereby suggesting the possibilities of heterosis.