Identification of Good Combiner with Heterotic Group in Bread Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Research Farm, Nawabganj, C.S. Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh, India) to estimate the heterosis and analyze the combining ability in 8 × 8 diallel sets of bread wheat (Triticum aestivum).Analysis of variance (ANOVA) results showed that all traits had significant variance owing to general combining ability (GCA) among the parents and all traits except spike length had considerable variance due to specific combining ability (SCA) among the crosses.Combining ability research showed that most of the traits involved both additive and non-additive gene activity.Parents HD 3086, DBW 187, and DBW 252 were found to be the top general combiners for grain yield and yield-contributing characters based on GCA and per se performance.According to SCA and per se performance for most of the traits, crosses DBW 187 × DBW 303 and DBW 252 × DBW 303 were good specific combiners.There was significant heterosis over the economic parent for all the characters studied.On the basis of economic parent, the amount of heterosis was greatest for the character number of productive tillers per plant (NPT) (33.66%) whereas, for the majority of yield-contributing traits, the cross combinations HD 3086 × DBW 303, DBW 187 × ATLAS, DBW 187 × DBW 303, and DBW 252 × DBW 303 were highly significant and preferred over the economic parent.