Exploitation of heterosis in cucumber for earliness, yield and yield components utilizing gynoecious lines

Abstract

Seven parental lines including two gynoecious lines were used to develop 21 F1 hybrids of cucumber by halfdiallel mating to determine the magnitude of heterosis for earliness yield and yield related traits during spring summer and rainy season. The mean sum of squares were highly significant for all the characters indicated a wide genetic variation for the characters studied and there is a possibility of genetic improvement using such genetic pools in future breeding programme. The gynoecious parental lines (PPC-2 and GPC-1) and monoecious parent Pusa Uday were observed to be the three top performing parents for yield per plant. Appreciable heterosis was observed over better parent and top parent for most of the characters studied. The F1 hybrids those found to be superior in performance over top parents for various characters were GPC1 × PPC-2 for node number at first female flower, number of fruits per plant, PPC-2 × Pusa Uday for days to fruit set, days to first fruit harvest, yield per plant, Punjab Naveen × Pusa Uday for fruit length, fruit diameter, DC-1 × Pusa Uday for average fruit weight. The best three heterotic hybrids PPC-2 × Pusa Uday, GPC-1 × Pusa Uday and PPC-2 × Punjab Naveen showing 64.51, 55.61, and 54.57% heterosis, respectively, over standard check Pusa Uday for yield per plant, may be exploited for commercial cultivation.