Assessment of Combining Ability for Yield and Associated Traits in Sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.)

The study was carried out at the Oilseeds Research Station, Latur. During kharif 2023, crosses were produced and during Rabi 2023–24, evaluation was conducted to assess the combining ability for seed yield and component traits in parents and hybrids in sunflower. In this study, 48 F1 hybrids were produced through Line x Tester mating design during Kharif 2023 using six CMS lines (DSF-2 A, CMS 148A, CMS 47A, CMS 597A, CMS 103A, CMS 112A) and eight testers (RHA-1055, EC-601951-1, EC-601924, R-274, LTRR-341, AKSF-15R, BK-R-1, R-856). These hybrids were assessed using a Randomized Block Design with two replications at the Oilseeds Research Station in Latur during Rabi 2023–24, together with their 14 parent lines and two commercial checks (LSFH-171 and KBSH-44). The observations were recorded on five randomly selected plants and the average value of these data was calculated for ten quantitative attributes. The analysis of combining ability (GCA and SCA) effect was came out by using the Line x Tester analysis method suggested by Kempthorne [1]. The significance of GCA and SCA effects was determined at the 0.05 and 0.01 level using the t-test [2]. All characteristics had substantial significant variance due to line x tester effects. The existence of non-additive gene action for days to maturity, head diameter, seed filling, 100 seed weight and seed yield per plant were recorded. The per cent contribution of testers towards total variance was greater than lines for all the characters except plant height. Among the parents, two lines CMS-597 A and CMS-47 A and four testers RHA-1055, EC-601924, R-274 and AKSF-15R were found to be superior general combiners for seed yield per plant and most of the yield contributing traits. On the basis of mean performance, SCA effects of crosses and GCA effects of the parents, the crosses viz., CMS-112 A x AKSF-15R, CMS-148 A x RHA-1055, CMS-597 A x R-856, CMS-47 A x R-274, CMS-597 A x LTRR-341, CMS-112 A x EC-601924 and CMS-597 A x EC-601951-1 recorded high SCA effect with low x high, low x high and high x high GCA status of parents for seed yield per plant.