2024, Vol. 7, Special Issue 7

author(s)
Nishakar Singh Meena, Amit Dadheech, Hemlata Sharma, Virendra Singh, Jagadish Choudhary and Sohail Momin

abstract
Opium poppy is a valuable multipurpose crop, with long standing legacy of medicinal and pharmaceutical utilities and have also been emerged as a model crop by virtue of it’s versatility and uniqueness. Keeping in mind, the requirements of genetic enhancement and better breeding advancements of the poppy, a line × tester analysis was carried out to assess the heterosis, heterobeltiosis and economic heterosis of forty five F1 hybrids developed by crossing 15 lines/females and 3 testers/males of diverse parents along with two suitable checks for thirteen viable economical traits in Papaver somniferum L. The hybrids were evaluated in a randomized block design during Rabi 2023-2024 at Instructional farm, RCA, MPUAT, Udaipur. The analysis of variance the mean squares due to genotypes were found significant for all the characters under investigation. On partition of genotypic variance into parents, crosses, parents v/s crosses showed the presence of significant differences between parents and parents v/s crosses, indicating the presence of considerable amount of genetic diversity in the experimental material. The estimates of relative heterosis for seed yield per plant revealed that out of forty five crosses, twelve crosses exhibited positive significant relative heterosis which ranged from 15.94 (UOP-790 x UOP-16) to 39.25 (UOP-98 x UOP-79). Nine crosses showed positive significant heterobeltosis and the magnitude varied from 17.85 (UOP-32 x UOP-79) to 34.42 (UOP-98 x UOP-79). While UOP-86 x UOP-79 showed significant positive economic heterosis for this character over the best check JOP-540. Therefore, these promising crosses can be recommended for exploitation of heterosis to obtain appropriate segregants for crop improvement program in opium poppy.