Heritability and gene effects for yield related quantitative traits in eggplant

摘要

Knowledge of gene actions and their relative contribution in expression of characters is of great importance. Therefore, four crosses were made among the six parents viz ., Doli-5 × GBL-1 (cross 1), Doli-5 × KS-331 (cross 2), Pusa Uttam × KS-331 (cross 3) and AB 07-02 × GOB 1 (cross 4) to study gene actions responsible for inheritance of twelve fruit yield traits. The generation mean analysis in six populations revealed significant digenic interactions for all the characters in majority of the crosses studied. Character-cross combination revealed the adequacy of simple additive dominance model for plant height (in cross 1), primary branches per plant (in cross 2), secondary branches per plant (in cross 3), fruit length (in cross 2), fruit girth (in cross 3) and pedicel length (in cross 3) indicating the absence of non-allelic interactions. Most of the crosses for all the yield traits showed low magnitude of dominance and environmental variances, revealing higher heritabilities. Duplicate epistasis effects controlled all traits in different cross-combinations suggesting the mild selection intensity in the earlier generations while intense in later generations. However, in few cases average dominance ratio was more than unity indicated the importance of dominance gene effects. These results indicated that for eggplant improvement, additive variation is of great importance and makes it possible to successfully select better individuals in segregating populations, since the selective gains will depend only on gametic variation. For this reason, backcross, pedigree, single-seed descent or gametic selection methods are recommended for advancing the segregating populations.