Studies on Heterosis in Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.)

The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with three replications at the Plant Breeding Farm, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar. The present investigation on sesame comprised of a 6 x 6 diallel set their 30 crosses. The observations were recorded on days to flowering and days to maturity, plant height (cm), number of branches per plant, number of capsules per plant, capsule length (cm), seed yield per plant (g), 1000 seed weight (g), harvest index (%) and oil content (%) on randomly selected five competitive individual plants. The data were subjected to estimation of heterosis. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the genotypes, hybrids and parents for all the traits except 1000 seed weight for parent studied. Several crosses exhibited significantly desirable heterobeltiosis and economic heterosis for seed yield per plant and other characters. On the basis heterosis it may be concluded that VRI 2  GOWRI, TMV 6  TMV 7 and GOWRI  VRI 2 can be rated as best hybrids and the hybrids TMV 6  VRI 2 and TMV 5  CO 1 can be rated as better hybrids based on the magnitude of heterosis.