Abstract

                                An experiment was conducted with F2 populations of eleven crosses to test the variation of individual F2 s and to study the genetic characteristics of the trait branching, seed yield and other yield attributing traits. The magnitude of variability was much higher in all the eleven crosses for number of primary branches, number of capsules per plant and seed yield per plant. It was noticed that all the crosses showed desirable frequency of positive transgressive segregants (FPTS) for all the traits. All the crosses skewed positively for number of primary branches, number of capsules and seed yield per plant. The dispersion of F2 population is of leptokurtic in nature for seed yield per plant in all the crosses except TMV 5 x KS 990812 which showed platykurtic distribution. The trait, number of branches showed platykurtic distribution in six crosses indicating wider variability in that population. The cross TMV 5 x KS990812 displayed favorable number of branches with high variability for seed yield and the cross TMV 4 x KS990813 displayed high mean and variability for seed yield and number of capsules per plant. Hence these two crosses could be considered as the most promising to obtain desirable segregants and the selected progenies from this population could be utilized for further study in the next generation.

Key words : Sesame, F2 population, skewness, kurtosis and variability