Heterosis Studies in Indian Mustard [Brassica juncea (L.) Czern & Coss.] for Yield and its Related Attributes

Above titled experiment was conducted at two locations, College of Agriculture, Bikaner and ARS, Sri Ganganagar respectively. In this experiment, 125 F1s, 25 parent genotypes (20 lines and 5 testers) and one check were analyzed at each location. For the study, a total of four environments were created, each location had two environments, timely sown and late sown, respectively. Subsequently, on the basis of pooled data of four environments standard heterosis was estimated for twelve yield and yield related attributes over the check variety RGN-13. Through the study, significant standard heterosis results were obtained for most of the traits including seed yield per plant. From the performance point of view, crosses RGN 73 x Kranti, Vardan x Kranti; Vardan x RB-50 and; RH-749 x RB-50 reported significant standard heterosis for many characters. For almost all the characters variable number of crosses depicted standard heterosis in both positive and negative direction, indicating that genes with negative as well as positive effects were dominant. This show of unpredictability highlights the role of non additive gene actions, which in turn may be due to dominance and/or epistasis.