INHERITANCE OF GRAIN YIELD AND YIELD PARAMETERS IN RICE (Oryza sativa L.) USING PARTIAL DIALLEL MATING ANALYSIS

A study on the Inheritance of grain yield and yield parameters in rice using partial diallel mating analysis was carried out at the National Cereal Research Institute (NCRI),Badeggi,Bida, Niger State. The planting materials used in this experiment include a variety of new Africa Rice (NERICA 1 also known as FARO 55) and four varieties of other FARO rice (FARO 41, 47, 63 and 64). Planting materials were crossed according to a partial diallel mating analysis. Parent lines and F1 hybrids were evaluated, individual and joint analyses of variance were performed,the result obtained from the analysis of variance for the parameters analyzed showed that there was a high significant difference at the parent line and the Specific Combining Ability (SCA) for the parameters observed at (P<0.05) and least significance at the General Combining Ability (GCA) and replication on the side of plant height at harvest and panicle count at replication at (P<0.05). However,Heritability in narrow sense was observed to be high in all studied trait from 0.82% to 0.98%. The crosses between FARO 41 x FARO 47 and FARO 47 x FARO 63 were identified as the most promising F1 for breeding programmes for higher grain yield. Thus, can therefore be recommended to farmers for high grain yield