Line x Tester Analysis of Combing Ability for Seed Yield and Its Contributing Traits in Soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill]

Hybridization in Line x Tester mating design was conducted with seven lines and three diverse testers in soybean to understand the nature of gene action, combining ability of the parents (gca) and to assess the potential for the exploitation of heterosis (sca) in hybrids. Data on eleven quantitative characters viz., days to 50% flowering, plant height (cm), number of branches per plant, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, pod length (cm), 100-seed weight (g), seed yield per plant (g), biological yield per plant (g) and harvest index (%) were collected on 21 hybrids and their 10 parents. The ratio of GCA variance to SCA variance is less than unity indicated that non additive genetic effects were predominant for control of most of the seed yield and its attributing characters. Among the lines, AUKS 238, RKS 18, RVS 2011-10 were found high gca effects which are use as general combiner parents for enhancing yield potential by assembling the favourable genes and crosses with sca effects such as AUKS 224 x JS 20-98 and RVS 2011-10 x NRC 150 were found to be superior for seed yield and yield components. These crosses may be utilized for heterosis breeding as well as for isolating the superior recombinants in advance generation for seed yield.