Combining ability in potato (Solanum tuberosum L.)

An investigation was conducted with ten potato genotypes following line x tester mating design to study the combining ability of yield and yield component characters viz., days to emergence, plant height, number of stems/plant, number of tubers/plant, tuber weight/plant, tuber dry matter content and tuber weight loss due to respiration were studied. Highly significant genotypic difference was observed for almost all the characters. The contribution of testers was observed to be higher than that of the line x tester intersection for NS, NT and TW revealed the higher estimates of additive gene action among the testers. The sca variance was higher in magnitude than the gca variance for all the characters indicated the predominance of nonadditive type of gene action for the expression of these characters. Estimation of gca effects of the parent revealed that among the male parents TPS-67 was found to be the most desirable parent, and among the female parents Lal Pakri, Patnai, Shill Bilati and Ausha were found to be good general combiner for tuber yield and its component characters. The estimation of sea effect reveled that out of 21 crosses, eight were found to be good specific combiner for tuber yield.