COMBINING ABILITY AND HETEROSIS IN DIALLEL CROSS OF WEST AFRICAN OKRA

Heterosis and combining ability using 8 x 8 diallel cross technique was investigated in West African okra accessions. The 28 F1¿s and the 8 parents were evaluated in two locations (Mubi and Makurdi, Nigeria) during 2012 and 2013 cropping season. The results showed significant entries, parent and years mean squares for all studied traits except for number of pods/plant and pod yield for the hybrid in Mubi and pod yield for the parent and year in Makurdi. This suggests that these genotypes would likely respond to selection procedure. In Mubi, GCA effects of parents revealed that NG/TO/JUN/09/007 and Syria (Mubi¿1) were good general combiners for earliness and also had significant positive GCA effects for pods/plant and pod yield. For Makurdi location, early maturing hybrid NG/AA/SEP/038 had significant positive GCA effects for all studied traits. For Mubi location, early maturing hybrid NG/AA/SEP/038 x NG/SA/DEC/07/0528 exhibited high SCA effect and high heterosis for pod yield (28.06%) and other yield related traits, whereas for Makurdi location, early maturing hybrid NG/TO/JUN/09/007 x NG/SA/DEC/07/0445 had the largest heterosis for pod yield (30.44%).