GENETIC ANALYSIS OF GRAIN YIELD AND ITS ATTRIBUTES IN PEARL MILLET

The nature of gene action was studied for grain yield and eleven component traits in pearl millet using 8 x 8 diallel fashions. The preponderance of non-additive gene action was observed in the inheritance of days to flowering, days to maturity and 1000-grain weight. Whereas, the importance of both additive and non-additive gene action were noticed for grain yield per plant, ear head length, ear head weight, plant height, number of grains per square cm, dry fodder yield per plant and harvest index. However, the magnitude of dominant gene action (H1) was greater than their corresponding additive gene effects (D) for all the traits. This suggested that the dominant genes played a significant role in the control of all the characters. The average degree of dominance (H1/D) 0.5 was found to be in the range of over dominance for all the characters except number of effective tillers per plant, ear head girth and number of grains per square cm (partial dominance). The distribution of genes with positive and negative effects was found asymmetrical for all the traits except nearly symmetrical distribution for days to flowering, days to maturity and ear head girth. The ratio of KD/KR revealed that the dominance genes were more frequent than recessive ones. A few genes gene governed characters. Narrow sense heritability estimates was high for ear head weight, number of grains per square cm, grain yield per plant, dry fodder yield per plant and harvest index, whereas they were moderate for ear head length. The rest of the characters showed low heritability.