Author(s):

Kiran N and Shrikant S Patil

Abstract: Formation and exploitation of heterotic groups has helped in enhancing heterosis level in cross-pollinated crops. The principles of heterotic grouping and its exploitation by reciprocal selection can be applied for self pollinated crop like cotton with modifications suitable for mating system of cotton. At ARS Dharwad, continuous studies on series of hybrids helped in understand complementation patterns between different plant types; on the basis of these, different heterotic groups like Stay Green, High RGR, Compact etc., were made. In the present study broad based heterotic box was formed by using four elite combiner parents from Stay Green heterotic group. An attempt was made to follow recurrent selection for combining ability for exploiting the Stay Green group and improving performance of cotton hybrids. Twenty double cross F3 lines of Stay Green group were used as base material for practicing recurrent selection against three high RGR testers producing 60 derived F1s. The derived F1s were evaluated during kharif 2018. Analysis of variance for combining ability revealed significance of mean sum of square due to crosses for all the characters. The lines SG 13 and SG 12 were identified as good general combiners for most of the yield and yield attributing traits like seed cotton yield, lint yield, number of bolls per plant, boll weight and lint index. The derived F1s SG14 × RCR-4 and SG16 × RCR-4 were best specific combiners for yield and yield attributing traits like seed cotton yield, Lint yield, number of bolls per plant, boll weight and lint yield.

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