Relationship Between Combining Ability, Genetic Components And Genetic Diversity Using Triple Test Cross
Abstract Background: The target of this study is to investigate the relationship between genetic components, combining ability and genetic diversity among twenty six cotton crosses derived from a cross between thirteen contrasting inbred lines with two testers in three replications using modified triple test cross model.Results: All the genotypes showed highly significant differences for twelve yield and fiber quality traits reflecting genetic variability between lines, testers and crosses. Giza 86 is considered as a good combiner for yield and its components traits, while Giza 45 is the best combiner for fiber fineness and fiber strength, which classified in unique cluster. Most of the combinations having significant SCA effects were belonging to genetically diverse parents. The mean squares for the deviations revealed the presence of significant epistasis for all the studied traits except, seed index and fiber reflectance. While, significant mean squares were shown for sums and differences except lint index for additive and uniformity ratio and fiber reflectance for dominance. The fixable type (i) of epistasis was larger than non-fixable (i + l) type for the inheritance of the studied traits. The traits had significant mean squares for both fixable and non-fixable gene action, also showed significant GCA and SCA among 15 parents and 26 cotton crosses, respectively. Additive genetic component was larger than dominance for all the studied traits. So, most of the studied traits had significant GCA and degree of dominance was less than unity for all the studied traits, indicating partial or incomplete dominance. The correlation coefficient between the sums and difference were found to be insignificant indicating the genes with positive and negative effects were equally distributed among the genotypes.Conclusions: Genetic correlation between three genetic components revealed that both additive and epistasis play a great role among some studied traits suggesting common genetic pool. Thus, selection based on additive gene action based on indirect selection could improve cotton yield. The genotypes which have large genetic diversity could produce significant general or specific combining ability which may be reflecting its genetic behavior.