HETEROSIS STUDIES FOR SEED YIELD AND ITS ATTRIBUTING TRAITS IN PEARL MILLET (PENNISETUM GLAUCUM (L.) R. BR.)

Abstract

The present heterosis study comprises of twelve parents which includes eight males, four females and thirty-two crosses along with two checks of pearl millet. The genotypes were evaluated in Randomized Block Design with two replications during Kharif 2025, at experimental farm of National Agricultural Research Project, Chh. Sambhajinagar. Observations were recorded for 11 characters viz., days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number tillers per plant, panicle length, panicle girth, Zn content, Fe content, fodder yield per plant, test weight and grain yield per plant. The mean sum of squares for parents and crosses exhibited highly significant differences for all the characters. Parents vs crosses differed significantly for all the characters. The mean sum of squares for parents further partitioning of the variance due to various source of variation also showed the significant differences for all the characters under study. Among the parents, ICMA-92888A among the lines and 17592R and 15333R among testers exhibited significant and desirable GCA effects for seed yield and most of the traits. These parents can be utilized for future breeding programme to produce high yielding pearl millet crosses. The crosses ICMA-92888A x 18111R, ICMA-99555A x 17592R, ICMA-95111A x 15333R, ICMA-92888A x SBP-2R and ICMA-99555A x 15385R exhibited higher per se performance, heterobeltosis and standard heterosis with positive and significant SCA effects and positive GCA effects for at least one of the parents of every cross for seed yield per plant. Such crosses can be utilized for commercial exploitation in peal millet.