| Grain yield per plant. The grain yield per plant has a prime importance in any breeding programme. It is seen from the table that all the hybrids exhibited a marked superiority over respective mid and superior parental value. The most out-standing hybrid was of the cross C 273 x Chenab 70, which out-yielded the better parent by 42.75 percent and the mid parent by 51.61 percent. Regarding the mean performance, the F1 hybrids surpassed in yield by 33.24 percent and 31.16 percent to the mid and better parental values. The results are in accordance with those obtained by MAKENZIE and GRANT (1970) who obtained the hybrids with 25.36 percent increase in grain yield, SHEBESKI (1970) who reported heterosis increasing 30.50 percent over the better parent. HASSNAIEN et al. (1974) reported heterosis increasing 8.94 percent over the mid parental value and 2.62 percent over the better parent. CREGAN & BUSCH (1978) obtained hybrids exceeding 5 to 58 percent over the mid parent in grain yield. All the hybrids exhibited an average increase over the better parent by 6.78, 35.81, 21.40, 2.22, 22.85 and 31.16 percent respectively for plant height, number of tillers per plant, spike length, number of kernals per spike, 100-kernel weight and grain yield per plant. The most promising of all the hybrids was of the cross C 273 x Chenab 70, which transgressed the better parent by 42.15 percent in grain yield, 40.33 percent in number of tillers per plant, 26.51 percent in spike length, 21.20 percent in 100-kernel weight, 19.33 percent in plant height and 8.89 percent in number of kernels per spike. In order of merit, the yield components such as number of kernels per spike, number of tillers per plant and spike length contributed towards grain yield. However 100-kernel weight showed lowest variation. Finally, it was also observed that the crosses which involved the high yielding parents with diverse and geographically distant origin exhibited the greater hybrid expression. Literature Cited BITZER M.J. & S.H. FU, 1972. Crop Sci. 3: 35-37. CHOWDHRY, A.R., AMIR MOHAMMAD & M.Z. QAZI, 1972. Exp. Agri. 8(3). Dept. Pl. Br. & Genet. Pak. Agric. Univ. Lyallpur. CREGAN, P.B. & R.H. BUSH, 1978. Crop Sci. 18: 247-251. HASSNAIEN, F.H., A.K., SALIM H.A. IBRAHIM & S.E.A. ATTIA, 1974. Res. Review 52(8): 1-8, Dept. Genet. Fac. Agric. Ain Shame Univ: Cairo, Egypt. HRASKA, S. 1975. Fol' nohospdarstov 21(9): 722-729. POPVIC, A. 1976. Poljoprivredna Znaustvena Smotra 38: 147-153. SINGH SULTAN and R.B. SINGH, 1978. Ind. J. Genet. & Pl. Breed. 38(2): 168-172. TSUNEWAKI, K. 1970. Jap. J. Breeding 20: 69-74. |
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