Nature of gene action for important quantitative characters in brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

Generation mean analysis was carried out to asses the presence of inter-allelic interaction and estimate the importance of various gene effects for inheritance of seven horticultural traits viz., days to first flowering, number of flowers per inflorescence, number of primary branches per plant, plant height, total number of fruits per plant, yield per plant and early yield per plant in brinjal. Six generations P1, P2, F1, F2, B1 and B2 of the crosses BARI x Pant Rituraj, BARI x PB-67 and BARI x Pant Samrat were used for the study. Scaling test revealed that all four types of scales (A, B, C, and D) were highly significant for most of the characters which indicated non allelic interaction of gene effects for all characters. High values of chi-square (I‡2) also supported the non-allelic interaction for all characters. The joint scaling tests also indicated the presence of interaction of gene effects and epistatic effects. Duplicate dominant epistasis was observed in the inheritance of all characters in all families, except early yield per plant in family BARI x Pant Rituraj, where complementary recessive epistasis was of importance.