Studies on Magnitude of Heterosis for Yield and it's Components in Pigeon Pea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.]

The six genotypes were crossed in a half diallel fashion and 15 F1's were obtained. All the crosses and their parents along with check were sown in randomized block design with three replications during Kharif-2023. The observations on eleven characters were recorded. Comparison of mean squares due to parents vs. hybrids was found to be significant for pods per plant, seeds per pod, seed yield per plant, 100 seed weight and protein content. This implied that the performance of parents were different than that of hybrids, which revealed the presence of mean heterosis for almost all the characters studied. The characters with favourable heterosis over better parent in more number of crosses were pod length (11), pods per plant (09), primary branches per plant (08), days to 50% flowering (07), days to maturity (07), plant height (06), secondary branches per plant (05) and seed yield per plant (05), whereas less number of crosses were observed for seeds per pod, 100 seed weight, protein content with favourable heterobeltiosis. Among the hybrids, BP-16-184 x NP-09-30, UPAS-120 x NP-09-30, NP-09-26 x NP-09-30 and BDN-711 x NP-09-26 were found to be the most heterotic cross combinations for seed yield per plant and yield attributing traits.