Abstract
The experimental materials comprised of five lines (females) and twelve testers. Sixty crosses along with parents were evaluated during monsoon 2003 at four locations in two replications. Results revealed that non-additive gene action was more prevalent for almost all traits, as the variances due to specific combining ability (sea) were higher than the general combining ability (gea) variances. The parents ICPL-87119, BDN-20M, ART-8811, BSMR-736 and BSMR-853 had good general combining ability, whereas among the crosses BDN-2 × BDN-2010, BDN-2 × BSMR-853 and BSMR-736 × ART-8811 were the best specific cross combinations for grain yield/plant and plant spread, number of primary branches/plant, number of secondary branches/plant and number of pods/plant.