Genetic assessment of physical quality traits in rice (Oryza sativa L.) by generation mean analysis

Physical quality characters viz., hulling (%), milling CYO, head rice recovery (%), kernel length (mm), kernel breadth (mm) and kernel L/B ratio were studied in three crosses viz., BPT 5204/MTU 1081 (C-1), MTU 1010/JGL 13595 (C-2) and NLR 34449/MTU 1075 (C-3). Six populations (P-1, P-2, B-1, B-2, F, and F-2) of these crosses were evaluated in RBD and generation mean analysis was carried out. Of all the three scaling tests one or more tests were highly significant indicating inadequacy of additive dominance model to explain the inheritance of the characters studied. Though both additive and non-additive gene actions were significant, non-additive gene actions played predominant role in the inheritance of the traits. Majority of the characters were under the influence of either complementary or duplicate epistasis besides additive type of gene effects.