Estimation of Combining Ability in F2 Hybrids of Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) Genotypes

Abstract

The seed of 6 parental cultivars along with 15 F2 Hybrids of hexaploid wheat was planted in randomized complete block design with three replications 6 x 6 half diallel during 2016-2017 sat Southern Wheat Research Station, ARI, Tandojam, Sindh, Pakistan. Mean squares due to General Combining Ability (GCA) and Specific Combining Ability (SCA) variances were highly significant and significant for all morphological traits. It was noticed that additive, as well as nonadditive genes, were there for GCA and SCA. SCA variances were observed greater than those of GCA variances for five traits (PH, TPP, SL, SPS, GYPP) displaying the predominance of nonadditive genes, for some of the characters, nonetheless, GCA variances were more for the rest of the characters (GPS, TGW). Parental cultivars such as Khirman displayed maximum positive and desirable GCA effects for spike length and grains spike-1, Hamal for tillers plant-1 and spikelets spike-1 and Benazir and NIA-Sarang for grain yield plant-1 and seed index. On the other hand, Hamal and NIA-Sarang equally distributed negative, but desirable GCA effects for plant height. The SCA estimates revealed that Sindhu x Hamal manifested maximum positive estimates for spike length and grain yield plant-1, whereas Benazir x Sindhu was found as the best specific combiner for spikelets spike-1 and seed index, Benazir x Khirman and Benazir x NIA-Sarang for tillers plant-1 and grains spike-1. These F2 hybrids may be the best choice as a breeding material for hybrid crop development to improve yield characters. Therefore, it may be possible to take advantage of better general and specific combiners to further selection for the development of a hybrid variety of wheat which can assist to enhance the total production in Pakistan.

Selection for high yield and quality in half-diallel bread wheat F2 populations (Triticum aestivum L.) through heterosis and combining ability analysis

“…Although Flamura85, Aldane and Selimiye varieties are appropriate parents that can be used to increase grain quality, Esperia, Saraybosna, Fs and Pehlivan were poor combiners to increase grain quality. Consequently, our results on average performance and GCA effects for the respective characters are in agreement with those reported by Ismail (2015), Joshi et al (2020), and Abro et al (2021).…”

“…None of the crosses exhibited significant positive heterosis over the best parent for PH and SL. These results are in accordance with those recounted by Patel et al (2019), Sharma and Jaiswal (2020), Fleitas et al (2020) and Abro et al (2021). The crosses with SCA effects and heterotic performance for seed quality traits have been depicted in Table 4.…”

Gene action and genetic diversity in a six parental diallel crosses of wheat

“…While, the performance of F2 -populations were 15.74. These results are in line with those obtained by Farooqi et al (2006), Verma et al (2016), El-Said (2018), Joshi et al (2020) and Abro et al (2021).…”

Elucidation of gene action and combining ability for productive tillering in spring barley

“…The experimental data from systemic crosses are valuable not only for cross-pollinated crops. This is also confirmed by many articles that concur about assessment of the gene action and combining ability for different important traits in bread wheat (Ljubičić et al, 2017;Ayoob, 2020;Abro et al, 2021). Yield and its components under heat and drought-stressed and non-stressed conditions were elucidated (Mwadzingeni et al, 2018;Kamara et al, 2021;Semahegn et al, 2021), under irrigated and rainfed environments (Gupta et al, 2017;Saeed & Khalil, 2017), through several different ecological environments (Sharma et al, 2019), as well as some other morpho-physiological traits (Mohamed, 2019;Ahmad et al, 2020), heat tolerance (Jat et al, 2016), and cellular thermotolerance (El-Rawy et al, 2018).…”