COMBINING ABILITY ANALYSIS FOR SEED CHARACTERS IN JUTE (CORCHORUS-OLITORIUS L)

The nature of inheritance of the number of seeds per pod, seed yield per pod and 100 seed weight was studied from a seven parent diallel cross of Corchorus olitorius. Due to their high general combining ability effects, parents, viz, Tanganika, Peking, Russian red and JRO-632 have been suggested for the future hybridization programme. For seed production, crosses, namely, JRO-7835 X Tanganika, Sudan green X Russian red, JRO-632 Tanganika and JRO-878 X Peking with good specific combining ability effects have been recommended because of their throwing stable performing rare transgressive segregants. Population improvement approach in the form of diallel selective mating or mass selection with concurrent random mating has been suggested for exploitation of both additive and non-additive gene actions for these three seed characters.