General and Specific Combining Ability for Nine Morphologic Characters in Round Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

This work was carried out in collaboration between all authors. Authors Ravi Kumar and Randhir Kumar designed the study, performed the statistical analysis, wrote the protocol and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Authors AK and SKS managed the analyses of the study. Author PK managed the literature searches. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. ABSTRACT A study was undertaken to estimate general and specific combining in brinjal through diallel analysis involving 6 parents. The combining ability analysis revealed highly significant differences among the treatments for all the parameters studied except days to 50% flowering and number of primary branches per plant. The genotype SBRB-6/12 was found best general combiner for number of fruit per plant and yield per plant. The top three crosses (SBRB-3/12 x SBRB-2/12, SBRB-6/12 x SBRB-3/12 and KS-224 x Swarna Mani) with high per se performance have exhibited high sca effects for yield. Both additive and non-additive gene actions were operating for all the characters except days to 50% flowering, fruit diameter and number of primary branches/plant. Therefore, the general combiner can be exploited for the creation of varieties lines, and the presence of specific combining in the hybrids.