Exploitation of heterosis for yield and yield components in pigeonpea

Abstract

The commercial application of heterosis is considered to be an outstanding application of the principles of the genetics in the field of plant breeding. Pigeonpea is often cross-pollinated crop, therefore, it can be also improved genetically following breeding methods suitable for cross-pollinated crops. Therefore, an attempt has been made to study the extent of heterosis involving 3 medium duration females and 15 males of pigeonpea. Positive and negative heterosis over better parent and standard heterosis over check Asha was studied. The high heterosis was observed for seed yield and pods per plant, medium level of heterosis observed for plant height, 100-seed weight, reproductive period and branches per plant. Low amount of heterosis was recorded for days to flowering, days to maturity, pod length, seeds per pod and protein content. The highest heterosis was recorded by hybrid MS 3783 x BSMR 853 (35.36%) followed by MS 3783 x ICPL 84060 (28.08%) and MSCo 5 x P 185 (25.01%) for seed yield per plant. These hybrids also exhibited high standard heterosis for one or more yield attributing traits.