General and Specific Combining Ability Studies in Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

This experiment aimed to determine General Combining Ability (GCA) and Specific Combining Ability
(SCA) of six parental lines; SBRB-6/12, SBRB-1/12, KS-224, SBRB-2/12, Swarna Mani and SBRB-
3/12 through full-diallel parental crosses. Experiment was conducted from June 2012 to march 2013
and designed in Randomized Complete Block with three replications. The combining ability analysis
revealed highly significant differences among the treatments for all the parameters studied except
days to 50% flowering and number of primary branches per plant. The genotype SBRB-6/12 was
found best general combiner for number of fruit per plant and yield per plant. The top three crosses
(SBRB-3/12 x SBRB-2/12, SBRB-6/12 x SBRB-3/12 and KS-224 x Swarna Mani) with high per se
performance have exhibited high SCA effects for yield. Both additive and non-additive gene actions
were operating for all the characters except days to 50% flowering, fruit diameter and number of
primary branches per plant. Therefore, the general combiner can be exploited for the creation of
varieties and the presence of specific combinining ability in the hybrids.