Abstract:
The present experiment was carried out at South Valley University, Experimental Farm, during the three summer seasons of 2007, 2008 and 2009. The objective of this work to estimate of some genetic parameters to understand the inheritance of yield and its components of cowpea crosses (Azmerly x IT 82C-16 and Azmerly x IT 81D-1137). The results showed significant deviation from zero for values of A, B and C for all studied traits, indicating the in adequacy of the additive dominance model and the presence of non-allelic gene interaction. The additive and dominance gene effects and the types of epistasis, i.e., additive x additive, additive x dominance and dominance x dominance were important in the genetic system controlling for all studied traits in the two crosses. Dominance gene action (h) was the main types of gene effects for all studied traits in both crosses. The additive gene effects were found to be significant positive for days to flowering, number of pods/plant in the (cross 1), weight seeds/plant (g), total seed yield/kg feddan in the (cross 2), suggesting the potential for obtaining further improvements of these traits by using pedigree selection program. Duplicate epistasis was found for all studied traits in the two crosses. Heterosis % over mid-parent value ranged from - 4.45% for days to Flowering to 23.75% for number of seeds/pod trait in the (cross 2). The inbreeding depression % value ranged from -12.87% for days to flowering to 17.02% for number of pods/plant in the (cross 1).
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