TY - JOUR AU - AKPAN, Ndueso Michael AU - OGBONNA, Peter Ejimofor AU - ONYIA, Vincent Nduka AU - OKECHUKWU, Emeka Chibuzor AU - DOMINIC, Ima-obong Ignatius AU - ATUGWU, Agatha Ifeoma PY - 2017/12/20 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Genetic Control and Heterosis of Quantitative Traits in Several Local Eggplant Genotypes JF - Notulae Scientia Biologicae JA - Not Sci Biol VL - 9 IS - 4 SE - Research articles DO - 10.15835/nsb9410122 UR - https://www.notulaebiologicae.ro/index.php/nsb/article/view/10122 SP - 520-524 AB - <p style="text-align: justify;">The present study was performed to assess the nature of gene action governing inheritance of agronomic traits in eggplant genotypes and extent of mid parent heterosis (MPH) and better parent heterosis (BPH) in six eggplant hybrids generated from four superior and optimally divergent genotypes of eggplant namely ‘Yalo’, ‘Uyo’, ‘K3’ and ‘Iyoyo’ selected from the germplasm and were crossed in 4×4 half diallel mating design. The six hybrids were found to show a significant (p&lt; 0.05) positive MPH in yield traits and the highest was obtained in the hybrid ‘Yalo’ × ‘K3’ for number of fruits per plant (158.90%) and ‘K3’ × ‘Iyoyo’ for fruit yield per plant (63.14%) and fruit yield per hectare (62.20 %). The hybrid combinations ‘Yalo’ × ‘K3’ and ‘K3’ × ‘Iyoyo’ had significant positive BPH for the number of fruits per plant, 104.08% and 42.43%, respectively. For fruit yield per plant, the hybrid combination ‘Yalo’ × ‘K3’ (7.93%), ‘Uyo’ × ‘K3’ (8.48%) and ‘K3’ × ‘Iyoyo’ (12.26%) had significant positive BPH. However, the hybrid ‘K3’ × ‘Iyoyo’ (11.51%) showed significant positive BPH in fruit yield per hectare. Dominance and dominance × dominance gene effect were found to be positively higher in magnitude in all crosses for number of fruits per plant, fruit yield per plant and fruit yield per hectare. The prevalence of dominance and dominance × dominance gene effect in the yield traits indicate heterosis breeding as the best breeding method to improve the productivity of eggplant.</p> ER -