DIALLEL MEDIATED HYBRID SCREENING BY ANALYSIS OF YIELD ATTRIBUTES, SEED YIELD AND FIBER QUALITY IN COTTON GENOTYPES

Abstract

Globally, cotton yield and lint quality improvement especially through selection of promising genotypes continue to remain a pressing task for the sustainability of lint supplies to the textile industry. To achieve these goals, the use of diallel analysis is of prime pertinence in plant breeding to identify and screen out the elite genetic combinations and stable fidelity in subsequent generations. An experiment was carried out to study combining ability of the parental genotypes and their half-diallel hybrids for yield component, seed yield and fiber quality traits. The results showed highly significant differences among tested genotypes, indicating remarkably high genetic variability for all the studied traits. The ratio of 2 GCA/ 2 SCA > 1 for all traits under study exhibited the preponderance of additive gene action for inheritance of all traits under investigation. The results indicated that selection could be significantly responsive and performed in early segregating generation. Additionally, parents, Coker 139, Aleppo 90 and NIAB 414 were superior general combiner for yield and fiber quality traits. Likewise, hybrids especially Millinium Aleppo 124, Aleppo 124 NIAB Kiran and Aleppo 118 NIAB Kiran showed unmatched response variables. Thus based on these recorded findings, these hybrids can be exploited in future's breeding programs for boosting cotton yield and fiber quality through development of new promising varieties of cotton.