STUDIES ON COMBINING ABILITY FOR GRAIN YIELD AND COMPONENT TRAITS IN KHARIF URDBEAN

Combining ability studies were carried out through line x tester analysis involving six lines and three testers for ten quantitative traits in kharif  urdbean. The relative estimates of variance due to  specific combining ability (sca) were higher than variance due to general combining ability (gca) for days to maturity, plant height and number of pods per plant indicating the pre-dominance of non-additive gene action for these traits. The parents Mash 479 and KUG 489 were good general combiners for days to flowering, days to maturity and number of pods per plant. The cross ‘Mash 479 x Mash 1008’ exhibited significant positive sca effects for number of pods per plant, grain yield per plant and harvest index (%) alongwith high per se performance. The crosses; KUG 216 x Pant U 19, KUG 489 x Mash 338 and Mash 114 x Mash 1008 recorded highly significant sca effects as well as high per se  performance for number of pods per plant. These crosses could be further exploited to obtain transgressive segregants  in the breeding programme.