COMBINING ABILITY AND HETEROSIS ANALYSIS FOR GRAIN YIELD TRAITS IN FINE LONG GRAIN RICE (ORYZA SATIVA L.)

Experiment was conducted to study combining ability and heterosis for major yield traits namely days to 50% flowering (DF50), growth duration (GD), plant height (PH), effective panicles per plant (EP/Pl), panicle length (PL), grains per panicle (G/P), filled grains/panicle (FG/P), seed setting rate (SSR), 1000-grains weight (TGW), grain yield/plot ( GY/plot), grain yield/hectare (GY/ha). From Griffing’s analysis maximum general combining ability was found in L-203, CB-15 and CB-42 for PL, SSR, PH and G/P. The maximum specific combining ability was found in L-203 × CB-42 for PH, L-203 × Jasmine-85 for G/P, FG/P and CB-15 × CB-40 for GY/ha. The results revealed that for hybrid breeding, maximum heterosis could be exploited in crosses ‘Jasmine-85 × CB-42’, ‘CB-15 × CB-42’ and ‘Jasmine-85 × CB-15’ for major yield related traits. Taken together the results suggested potential use of the parents/crosses used herein for breeding commercial hybrid rice varieties as well as for the enhancement of the germplasm resources.