Abstract

The present investigation on diallel analysis was conducted in cowpea to study the combining ability in vegetable cowpea for 14 plant characters including green pod yield and its component characters. Combining ability analysis revealed that both additive as well as non-additive effects were important in the inheritance of all the traits studied. However, magnitude of general combining ability (gca) variances was smaller than the specific combining ability (sca) variances for all the traits indicating the preponderance of non-additive gene effects for all the characters. General combining ability effects revealed that the five parents viz., GC-0203, GC-0502, Subhra, GC-4 and Anand Cowpea-1 were the good general combiners for green pod yield per plant which had also the good general combining ability effects for the yield attributes like pods per plant, seeds per pod and 100-seed weight. Specific combining ability revealed that three top yielding hybrids viz., GC-0203 x Anand Cowpea-1, Subhra x GC-4 and GC-0203 x Pusa Komal expressed significant sca effects for green pod yield and its attributing characters involving good x good, good x good and good x average parental interaction, respectively. Cross GC-0203 x Anand Cowpea-1 had good mean performance for green pod yield involving parents with good x good gca effects and also having high sca effects for green pod yield, days to first picking and pods per plant.