GENETIC COMPONENTS OF VARIATION IN WHITE JUTE (CORCHORUS CAPSULARIS L.)

A diallel set, involving ten varieties/accessions of white jute including reciprocals was utilized for studying the genetic architecture of the parents and mode of gene action in F-1 and F(2)s. The estimates of D and HI indicated that both additive and dominance effect were significant for plant height, technical height, base diameter, number of nodes/plant, bark weight/plant, fibre weight/plant and stick weighUplant in F-1. In F-2 significant additive (D) and dominance (H-1) effects were observed for plant height, technical height, base diameter and fibre weight/plant. It appears that inheritance of these characters would likely to be more complex than the other. In F-1 generation the ratio of [(H-1/D)](1/2) was more than unity for bark weight/plant, fibre weight/plant and stick weight/plant suggesting the presence of over dominance for these traits. In F-2 similar phenomenon was observed for plant height, technical height, base diameter and bark weight/plant. It was revealed that the inheritance of these traits was predominated by over dominance effect of genes. Fibre weight/plant indicated complete dominance. In F-1 and F-2 the value of H-2/4H(1) was smaller than 0.25 for all the characters indicating asymmetry of positive and negative genes at different loci showing dominance. In F-1 broad sense heritability was greater than narrow sense heritability for all the characters revealed that genotypic variation was controlled by non-additive gene action. In F-2 the narrow sense heritability was estimated to be higher for plant height, technical height and base diameter and moderately high for number of nodes/plant.