COMBINING ABILITY ANALYSIS OF TUBER YIELD AND RELATED TRAITS IN POTATOES

In potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L. 2n=4x=48) both the general combining ability (GCA) effects of parents and specific combining ability (SCA) of crosses are important in conditioning traits of economic importance. The objective of this study was to determine the combining abilities for tuber yield and its components on seven highyielding commercial cultivars of potato and advanced potato clones. Significant differences were found between the parents in the all of traits that are associated with high genetic diversity between parents. GCA for tuber form, length of stolon and number of tuber per plant were high and for stem height, tuber skin appearance and eye dept were low. Heritability estimated from 49 percent in the number of stem to 84 percent in tuber skin appearance. Both heritability and genetic advance as percent of mean estimates were high for tuber yield, tuber form, length of stolon, tuber size, and number of tuber per plant and tuber size uniformity. AS10, AS12, AS14 and UT43 clones was best general combiner for the tuber yield, tuber size uniformity, eye depth, tuber dry matter and length of stolon. The SCA effects were the highest in the cross SavalanxUT43, LucaxAS20, Stbr2xSavalan and PicassoxHS in the traits were considered. Savalan and UT43 parents used in the crosses also have high GCA in studied traits. Finally results showed that Savalan, UT43, AS10, AS12 and AS14 in the studied traits was the high GCA and better than other parents.