COMBINING ABILITY FOR YIELD AND COMPONENT CHARACTERS IN MUNGBEAN [Vigna radiata (L.) Wilczek.]

A diallel technique was employed in which eight genotypically diverse lines of mungbean were crossed among themselves in all possible combinations excluding reciprocals. The analysis for combining ability revealed significant mean sum of squares of both general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) for all the characters which indicated the presence of both additive and non-additive gene actions. Relative magnitude of mean square were higher than that of SCA mean sum of squares for the traits indicating the importance of additive gene effects for all the characters, whereas the ratio of the estimates of variances due to GCA to that of SCA indicated preponderance of non-additive type of gene action for most of the characters except for plant height and pods per plant. The good general combiners for seed yield per plant were GM-4, Pusa Vishal, GM-2k3 and K-851. The best specific cross combinations were Pusa Vishal x SML-668, GM-4 x GM-3, GM-2k5 x GM-2k3, SML-668 x GM-4, K-851 x GM-4, GM-2k5 x K-851, GM-05-08 x K-851 and GM-2k3 x GM-4 showed the highest SCA effect for seed yield per plant. These cross combinations could be utilized for further use in breeding programme for improvement in yield and quality of mungbean.