Studies on heterosis and inbreeding depression for yield and its attributes in greengram [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek]

Five crosses were evaluated to study the extent of heterosis and inbreeding depression for yield and its attributing traits in greengram. Heterosis over mid parent, better parent and standard variety was significant for pods/plant and seed yield/plant. The crosses exhibiting high heterosis also expressed high inbreeding depression for pods/plant, pods/cluster and seed yield/plant. Heterosis coupled with inbreeding depression revealed the predominance of non-additive gene action for most of the characters studied. Owing to its autogamous genetic architecture and biological constrains of the crop the heterosis could be exploited only by isolating the desirable segregants for yield attributes adopting bi-parental or recurrent selection in early segregating generations followed by single plant selection in subsequent generations.