HETEROSIS STUDIES FOR YIELD AND YIELD CONTRIBUTING TRAITS OF UPLAND COTTON IN LINE X TESTER DESIGN

Abstract

A Line x Tester analysis was conducted in upland cotton with 56 hybrids along with their parents to estimate the magnitude of heterosis for yield and yield contributing characters. The analysis revealed presence of considerable variation among all the parents and hybrids. Seed cotton yield recorded highest average heterosis (12.62 %) followed by number of bolls per plant (10.61 %) and number of sympodia per plant (2.23 %). Highest heterotic effect for seed cotton yield was observed in cross Galama x IC 356932 for both relative heterosis (113.14 %) and heterobeltiosis (94.23 %) followed by BC 68-2 x HAG 1055 (91.00 % and 85.86% respectively) which also exhibited highest heterosis over mid parent (86.95 %) and better parent (82.48 %) for number of bolls per plant, an important yield contributing character. The hybrid NA 1325 x L 604 recorded highest per se performance for yield (218.5 g) was found to exhibit highest heterosis (56.12 %) over commercial check. Therefore, from the present study, it is clear that, the hybrids Galama x IC 356932, BC 68-2 x HAG 1055 and NA 1325 x L 604 could be used in future breeding programme for obtaining good transgressive segregants for important yield contributing traits and commercial exploitation of heterosis.