No abstract

Present investigation was carried out to spot out the best parent combinations giving high degree of useful heterosis for economic traits like seed yield and other yield attributing characters for sunflower breeding programme. Economic/ Standard heterosis is the measure of heterosis in terms of superiority over the standard check(s) / hybrid(s). The degree of heterosis varied for important useful characters among different crosses. Presence of high heterosis in certain crosses and low in others suggested that the nature of gene action varied with genetic architecture of the parents. For seed yield (kg/ha),the range of significant heterosis was observed from-21.4 per cent (CMS-10A XR-6D-1) to +19.0 per cent (P-2-7-1A X R 601958) along with two hybrids namely P-2-7-1A X R 601958 (19.0 %) and CMS-10 A X R-104 (12.4%) over standard check LSFH-171. The range of economic heterosis over DRSH-1 was recorded from-7.8 per cent (CMS-10A XR-6D-1) to 39.6 per cent (P-2-7-1A X EC-601958) with a total of twelve hybrids registering significant positive heterosis over DRSH-1. Among them, P-2-7-1A X EC-601958958(39.6 %), CMS-10 A X R-104(31.8)%), P-89-1A XEC-601958(22.4%) and CMS-302A X EC-512682(20.0 %) were found to be a superior crosses. For oil yield (kg/ha), significant heterosis was observed from-21.8 per cent (P-89-1A X R-630) to 22.60 per cent (P-2-7-1A X R 601958) along with the five hybrids such as P

Heterosis is the increase or decrease in vigour of F1 over its mid or better parental value. The development of new high yielding and stable sunflower hybrids based on hybridization requires information on the heterotic effects for agronomically important traits in the F1 generation. This paper estimates the extent of heterosis for various characters and to isolate promising sunflower hybrids. From the experiment it was revealed that the average heterosis of 8.9% for days to 50% flowering, 65.1% for plant height; 80.3% for head diameter;139.8% for seed yield (kg/ha);107.5% for number of filled seed/head; 5.9% for seed filling %; 10.8% for 100 seed weight, 12.1%for 100 seed kernel weight, 6.5% for hull content; 4.7% for volume weight (g/100 cc); 0.1% for oil content (%;) and 140.4% for oil yield (kg/ha) respectively. In all crosses, seed and oil yield (kg/ha) traits and other desirable traits, P-2-7-1A, CMS-10 A, P-89-1A, EC-601958, R-104, EC-601978, R-138-2, R-630 and R-6D-1 were involved more frequently. Among the 36 sunflower hybrids, for seed yield and oil yield (kg/ha), fifteen crosses displayed significant positive sca effects and performance per se, among them the crosses.

A field experiment was carried out at Ramkrishna Ashram KVK Instructional Farm, Nimpith, South 24Parganas during the pre-kharif season, 2012 to evaluate the performance of 66 numbers of green gram (Vigna radiata L.) genotypes in low to medium saline soil in coastal saline belts of Sundarbans, West Bengal. Almost all the 66 cultivars selected for the experiments took 5-6 days for 75% germination of seedlings and 27-36 days to achieve 50% flowering. Final plant stand count was from 70-80%. The higher value of seed yield was observed in PUSA-2031 (1398 kg), 75.4% higher in comparison to the local check Chaiti moong (797 kg/ha) followed by KM-11-573 (1302 kg; 63.3% more than LC), SM-11-41 (1286 kg; 61.3% more than LC), KM-11-583 (1280 kg, 60.6% more than LC), KM-11-578 (1211 kg, 51.9% more than LC), respectively. The significantly higher values of other yield attributing traits were observed among the green gram genotypes. In case of root length, the above genotypes were found significantly lower (12.33-14.33 cm, 7.8-20.4%) than the Chaiti moong (LC) 15.5 cm. From the above experiment it may be concluded that in the similar situation as well as soil salinity condition the above green gram genotypes may prove to perform better than the local cultivar Chaiti moong for cultivation in the coastal saline regions of Sundarbans, West Bengal.