Inheritance of Some Quantitative Characters in Pearl Millet

The mode of inheritance and heritability were studied for days to earing, plant height, tiller number and ear length in a cross of D62 and L4 and stem and ear girth in a cross of DYG 39 and NLTS 87. Overdomminance was observed for tallness and high tillering while increased ear length was partially dominant and there was almost no dominance for days to earing, ear girth and stem girth. Epistasis was absent for all the characters. The heritabilty in broad sense was high for all the characters and that in narrow sense was low for plant height and tiller number but for rest of the characters it was considerably high. Parent I.4 had more of dominant genes than D62 but DYG39 and NLTS87 seemed to have a balance grouping of the two.