Triple test-cross analysis for fruit yield and some component characters in cucumber

Abstract

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) is an important cucurbitaceous vegetable crop cultivated widely for consumption as fresh salad or pickles in many countries of the world. Through cucumber is considered as native of India endowed with high genetic variability and cross-pollinated nature, very little scientific attention has been paid for the genetic improvement and commercial exploitation of this crop in our country. Consequently, the available open-pollinated cultivars have low yield potential, while hybrid varieties exhibit narrow adaptation. The precise knowledge of additive, dominance and epistatic components of genetic variance for important metric traits is essential for achieving success in breeding programmes. The available reports on analysis genetic variation for quantitative traits in cucumber are invariably based on approaches that lack ability for through detection of epistasis to allow precise estimation of additive and dominance variance components using larger sample of crosses. Therefore, an attempt was made to detect epistasis and estimate additive and dominance genetic variance for ten important traits in cucumber during rainy season using modified triple test-cross (TTC) analysis.