Abstract

Heritability and genetic advance were estimated in four F₂ mungbean populations (Ramzan×ML-5, NM-92×NM-1919, NM-1919×ML-5 and ML-5×NM-51) at two locations (Peshawar and Swat) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, during 2008.Combined analysis exhibited highly significant differences among the genotypes and locations for pods plant^-1, pod length, seeds pod^-1, 1000-seed weight and seed yield. Similarly, genotype-by-location interaction was highly significant for pods plant^-1 and 1000-seed weight. Averaged over five parents and four F₂ populations, means for clusters plant^-1, pods plant^-1, pod length, seeds pod^-1, 1000-seed weight and seed yield plant^-1 at Peshawar and Swat were 9.2 vs. 9.8, 28.7 vs. 35.3, 8.5 vs. 8.7 cm, 9.3 vs. 10.0, 50.4 vs. 56.5 g and 7.1 vs. 7.6 g, respectively. Broad-sense heritability estimates in four F₂ population of mungbean ranged from 0.22 to 0.70 and 0.34 to 0.58 for clusters plant^-1, 0.33 to 0.75 and 0.19 to 0.61 for pods plant^-1, 0.19 to 0.74 and 0.45 to 0.68 for pod length, 0.21 to 0.58 and 0.48 to 0.66 for seeds pod^-1, 0.34 to 0.63 and 0.58 to 0.89 for 1000-seed weight and 0.15 to 0.64 and 0.45 to 0.61 for seed yield at Peshawar and Swat, respectively. Genetic advance was greater at Swat than at Peshawar. Among the four F₂ populations, genetic improvement of yield-associated traits will be more effective in Ramzan×ML-5 and ML-5×NM-51. Moreover, among the parents, ML-5 showed good combination with Ramzan and NM-51.

Key words: Heritability, harvest traits, F₂ populations, mungbean.