Combining ability and gene action for grain yield and agronomic traits in pearl millet restorer lines

The experimental material consisted of ten restorer lines and their 45 F1s developed through half diallel mating design, was evaluated in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications to study inheritance of grain yield and component characters.The analysis of variance for combining ability revealed that mean squares due to parents and F1s were significant for all characters studied except number of effective tillers per plant, thereby suggesting the importance of both additive and non additive gene effects. However, potence ratio and predictability ratio depicted preponderance of non-additive gene effectfor all the characters except number of effective tillers per plant, average earhead length, average earhead and girth. Among the parents, AIB-34 was only good general combiner for grain yield per plant. While, in case of hybrids, AIB-9 x AIB-34 and AIB-9 x AIB-29 were good specific combiners for grain yield per plant, number of effective tillers per plant and average earhead weight.