Combining Ability and Heritability Analysis for Early Maturity and Yield Traits in Contemporary Spring Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

An experiment was carried out with North Carolina Mating Design II (NC II) derived F1 progenies along with parents to know nature of gene action in regulating early maturity, yield and yield contributing traits. The principal objective of this research was to identify best parents and specific cross combinations based on combining ability analysis and estimation of heritability. Hybrids and their parents were arranged in a 8 by 8 partially balanced lattice design with two replicates. Kanchan, BARI Gom-25 × BARI Gom-21, BARI Gom-26 × Kanchan, Rawal × Kanchan, Rawal × BARI Gom-22 and BARI Gom-23 × Kheri showed earliness and BARI Gom-25 × BARI Gom-21 showed highest yield potentiality. The genotypes BARI Gom-28 and BARI Gom-30 were used as checks and the selected genotypes performed comparatively better than the checks. The genetic analysis exhibited significant additive and non-additive genetic variations for all the traits. For earliness and yield potentiality the variance due to SCA was highly significant than GCA. Heritability estimates revealed low broad sense heritability except the traits i.e. days to 50% flowering, days to 100% flowering, plant height and 100-grain weight, which exhibited medium heritability. Narrow sense heritability was low for all the traits. The GCA effect of 15 parental genotypes was insignificant for all the traits that were assessed. BARI Gom-25 x BARI Gom-21, BARI Gom-23 x BARI Gom-21, BARI Gom-25 x BARI Gom-27, BARI Gom-26 x Kanchan, BARI Gom-26 x BARI Gom-28, BARI Gom-25 x BARI Gom-27 showed significant SCA effects for earliness. BARI Gom-25 x BARI Gom-22, BARI Gom-26 x CB51 showed significant SCA effects for yield potentiality.