Combining ability studies in virus resistant Capsicum lines

Abstract

The investigation was undertaken to assess the combining ability of virus resistant chilli lines, to study the extent of heterosis of their hybrids for different characters and to locate resistant parents and hybrids for virus with special reference to cucumber mosaic virus. Combining ability studies have shown the predominance of additive gene action for fruit maturity, fruit length, fruit width, plant spread, primary branches, secondary branches, percent pericarp, percent seed content, number of fruits per plant and dry fruit yield per plant and non-additive gene action for days to 50% flowering and tertiary branches. The data on magnitude of heterosis over mid-parent, better parent, best parent and standard check revealed that the hybrid VR-42 x VR-55 was found superior over mid-parent, better parent, best parent and standard check dry fruit yield per plant. When the parents and their hybrids were screened for virus resistance under field conditions, it was seen that six parents viz., VR-42, VR-14, VR-47 and VR-55 exhibited some degree of resistance. In an experiment conducted to study resistance to cucumber mosaic virus, parents VR-42 and VR-55 were found completely free from infection. This was also confirmed by ELISA test. 91