To estimate the general combining ability and specific combining ability for seed yield and contributing characters in sesame (Sesamumindicum L.)

The experiment was conducted on sesame comprised of a half-diallel set of seven parents and their 21 crosses and it was laid out in randomized block design with three replications at college farm, N. M. College of agriculture, Navsari Agricultural University, Navsari during Late kharif, 2016-2017. The observations such as days to flowering and days to maturity, plant height (cm)], number of branches per plant, number of capsules per plant, capsule length, seed yield per plant (g), 1000 seed weight (g), harvest index (%) and oil content (%) carried out on randomly selected five competitive individual plants. The data were subjected to analyze combining ability and presence of both additive and non-additive gene effects. Combining ability analysis revealed presence of both additive and non-additive gene effects. The estimates of general combining ability effects suggested that parents AT 231 and AT 255 were good general combiners for seed yield per plant and its related attributes. As regards, specific combining ability effects cross combinations AT 242 x AT 255 (2.71) followed by AT 231 x G. Til 3 (2.23) and AT 231 x ASRT 8 (1.63) were significant positive effect for seed yield per plant. Looking to the role of additive as well as non-additive gene effects in the inheritance of most of the traits in the population under study, suggest diallel selective mating followed by heterosis breeding and biparental mating or recurrent selection breeding approaches for creation of more variability and to identify desirable transgressive segregants for further improvement of yield and yield component traits. On the basis of per se performance and combining ability effects for seed yield per plant and its components, parents AT 231 and AT 255 and the hybrids AT 242 x AT 255, AT 231 x G. Til 3 and AT 231 x ASRT 8 were identified superior hybrids for their large scale testing.