TRIPLE TEST CROSS ANALYSIS IN FOUR SESAME CROSSES (SESAMUM INDICUM L.) 2. YIELD, YIELD COMPONENTS AND WILT INFECTION

The present study was carried out during the three successive growing seasons of 1996, 1997 and 1998 to estimate the additive, dominance and epistatic components of genetic variation for the yield, yield components and wilt infection by using ninety triple test cross families and their parents, F1 and F2 in four sesame crosses. A randomized complete block design with three replications was used. The results indicated that mean squares of the genetic analysis of variance and the overall epistatic gene effects for the crosses showed highly significant differences for all studied characters. The [i] type (additive × additive) was considered as a major component of the overall epistatic effects for 1000-seed weight in the TTC3 cross, wilt infection percentage in TTC3 and TTC4, number of capsules/plant in TTC1, TTC2 and TTC4 and seed yield/plant in all crosses. The ratio of (H/D)1 for all crosses confirms the presence of partial dominance for all studied traits. The direction of dominance was positive and sign...