Genetic analyses for certain plant and ear characters in pearl millet top-crosses.

Combining ability and the genetics of tiller number, days taken to flower and ear thickness were studied in top-cross progenies of pearl millet. General combining ability seemed to be more important for all the characters. The prevalence of epistatic variation, presumably of the type additive x additive, additive x dominance and dominance x dominance gene effects, with a non-significant contribution of additive and dominance components of genetic variance, was observed for tiller number. For days taken to flower, the importance of additive genetic variance was greater than that of the dominance component with directional dominance towards the recessive allele. However, for ear thickness, the existence of additive genetic variability together with the additive x additive type of genic interaction was suggested.An appreciable effect of epistasis on[Formula: see text] andĤ 1 components was observed for tiller number, whereas this effect was not so marked for other characters.