Heterosis and Combining Ability of Pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata Duch. Ex Poir.)

Abstract

Combining ability and heterosis studies carried out using half diallel method with six parents for nine characters. The analysis revealed that none of the parents was found good general combiner for all the characters consistently, however the parents P₂, P₃, P₄ and P₅ were best general combiner’s for yield and flowering traits. The gca variance for node order to first female flower open, fruit length, fruit diameter, flesh thickness, average fruit weight, fruits per plant, yield per plant and TSS was higher than the sca variance. While the days to first female flower open had lower gca value than the sca variance indicating the predominance of non-additive gene effects. Five crosses P₁×P₄, P₃×P₆, P₄×P₂, P₅×P₃ and P₅×P₆ found promising and should be maintained for development of future hybrid varieties for their sca effect and desirable level of heterosis.