CONTENTS

PARASHURAM and JAYARAME
Table 5. Proportional contribution of lines, testers and interaction of line x tester for various yield
and yield contributing characters in Finger millet
Characters
Contribution of
females (%)
Contribution of
males (%)
Contribution of
females (%) X
male (%)
Plant height 71.28 7.76 20.96
Number of fingers per ear 78.96 6.75 14.29
Number of productive tillers per plant 27.19 12.59 60.21
Finger length 57.48 14.42 28.1
Finger width 15.72 10.69 73.58
Culm width 32.64 14.75 52.61
Peduncle length 71.38 3.69 24.92
Days to 50% flowering 30.93 20.6 48.48
Days to maturity 59.04 22.5 18.46
Straw yield per plant 54.48 19.35 26.17
Yield per plant 64.17 13.58 22.25
1000 seed weight 48.71 5.29 46.01
Table 6. Estimates of variance components for yield and yield contributing characters in finger millet
Characters 2 gca 2 sca 2 gca/ 2 sca
Plant height 4.80 24.47 0.20 : 1
Number of fingers per ear 0.06 0.11 0.53 : 1
Number of productive tillers per plant 0.00 0.09 0.00: 1
Finger length 0.04 0.29 0.12 : 1
Finger width -0.00 0.01 -0.03 : 1
Culm width 0.00 0.00 0.02 : 1
Peduncle length 1.60 10.52 0.15 : 1
Days to 50% flowering 0.03 0.86 0.04 : 1
Days to maturity 0.17 0.20 0.84 : 1
Straw yield per plant 7.67 55.82 0.14 : 1
Yield per plant 2.68 14.65 0.18 : 1
1000 seed weight 0.00 0.03 0.03 : 1
best crosses since they possessed desirable per se
performance and sca for plant height, number of
productive tillers per plant, straw yield per plant and
grain yield per plant (Table 4).
For all the 12 characters studied, the
contributions of females were considerably more
compared to males to the variance for all the
characters (Table 5). With respect to estimates of
variance components, the variance due to specific
combining ability effects was more for all the traits
than variance due to general combining ability effects
but none of the characters were exceeded unity
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