Combining Ability, Heritability and Heterosis Estimates in Faba Bean ( Vicia faba L.) under Two Water Regimes

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt

2 Botany Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt

Abstract

 IN ORDER to study drought tolerance among faba bean genotypes, five cultivars of faba bean, Giza 843 (P1), Giza 3 (P2), Maser 3 (P3), Sakha 3 (P4) and Sakha 1 (P5) were used for carrying out half diallel mating design in 2014/2015 winter season to study combining ability, heritability and heterosis for growth, leaf anatomical, photosynthetic pigments and yield characteristics under stress condition. Parents and their crosses were evaluated in a yield trial, in 2015/2016 winter season under two water regimes which were well-watered (100% from ETo) and severe water stress (60% from ETo) at the experimental farm of the Faculty of Agriculture, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt. Results were showed highly significant of general (GCA) and specific (SCA) combining ability for all measured characters under two water deficit, indicating that GCA and SCA were important in the inheritance of these traits. The results of studied characters were indicated that the majority of crosses exhibited highly significant heterosis estimates for mid parents (MP). Heritability in narrow sense was low to moderate and ranged from 1.68 to 58.6%. These results showed that these characters were greatly influenced by dominance and environmental condition. All preceding parents were studied to be good general combiners for its distinct characters. Also, results recommend that three of parental genotypes; P5, P2 and P4 were good combiners to improve the most characters and could be used as genetic resources for drought tolerance. The cross P1xP5 showed good SCA effects and significant values of heterosis for most characters under two water regimes. Also, the three crosses, P3xP4 (for growth characters), P1xP2 for (anatomical characters) and P2xP5 (for photosynthetic pigments characters and seed yield/plant) exhibited desirable SCA effects and significant heterosis values under two water regimes. These crosses might be used in faba bean breeding programs to produce pure lines have high yielding ability and drought tolerance.

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