Studies on Gene Action and Combining Ability for Yield and Other Quantitative Traits in Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

A set of 30 genotypes including 5 females, 4 males, their 20 F1 hybrids and one standard check (Surti Ravaiya) were sown at Vegetable Research Scheme, Regional Horticulture Research Station, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari to study the gene action and combining ability in brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) for 14 characters including fruit yield and its component characters following line x tester mating design. Combining ability analysis revealed that both additive as well as non-additive effects were important in the inheritance of all the traits studied. However, magnitude of variances due to sca was comparatively larger than those of gca for most of the economic traits indicated preponderance of additive component of genetic variance. Four crosses had desirable sca effects in addition to high per se performance for the trait. Among the parents, AB-8/5 and GJB-2 were good general combiners for majority of the traits, including fruit yield. The crosses viz., AB-8/5 x GJB-2, JBR-6/7 x GJB-2, AB-7/2 x JDNB-19, JBR8/7 x GOB-1 and AB-9/1 x GOB-1 showed higher order sca effects for fruit yield and its component characters.