ESTIMATION OF COMBINING ABILITY AND HETEROSIS FOR GRAIN YIELD AND ITS ATTRIBUTES IN BARLEY (HORDEUM VULGARE L.)

Barley is a nutri-rich rabi season cereal grain crop, known for its low input requirement even under harsh environments.The current study was carried out at CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar (Haryana) during the crop season 2019-20 and 2020-21 with the objective to estimate the combining ability and heterosis relates to grain yield and its contributing traits.The experimental material comprised of sixteen barley genotypes consisting twelve lines (female) and four testers (male), crossed in line x tester design in order to obtained 48 crosses (F 1s ).The analysis of variance revealed significant difference due to treatments, parents vs. crosses, crosses and line x tester for all the ten studied traits.Among the parents, three lines namely BBM 797, IBON-HI-2018-19-12, IBON-HI-2018-19-45 and one tester i.e.BH 885 exhibited positive significant GCA effects for grain yield.However, among crosses, IBON-HI 2018-19-12/ BH 902 showed highest positive and significant SCA effects followed by IBON-HI 2018-19-16/ BH 959 and IBON-HI 2018-19-119/ BH 885 for grain yield.Combining ability analysis elucidated higher magnitude of variance due to SCA than the GCA variances and higher estimates of dominance variance to additive indicated prevalence of non-additive gene action in almost all the traits.The average heterosis for grain yield was recorded highest in the cross IBON-HI 2018-19-12/ BH 902 followed by IBON-HI 2018-19-45/ BH 885 and BBM 797/ BH 946.Similarly, the crosses, IBON-HI 2018-19-45/ BH 885, IBON-HI 2018-19-12/ BH 902 and IBON-HI 2018-19-119/ BH 885 elucidated desirable heterobeltiosis for grain yield.The relative contribution of lines x testers' component was higher than the lines and testers for almost all the traits, confirming predominant role of non-additive gene effects in the inheritance of the characters.Consequently, one could plan for heterosis breeding availing information on combining ability effects, type of variances and magnitude of heterosis aimed to enhance grain yield in barley.