Determination of heterosis in beit alpha type cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) for yield, plant growth and other agronomical traits

Cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.), which can be cultivated both indoor and outdoor, is one of the broadly grown vegetable species worldwide as well as in our country. In order to develop better yielding new vegetable varieties, appropriate set-up of the breeding strategy is crucial. In this study, 10 F1 hybrids of cucumber involving 20 parental lines were studied to elucidate the extent of heterosis for yield, plant growth and other agronomical traits. In addition to the extent of heterosis for specified traits, hybrids were also studied to reveal the extent of the prediction for heterosis based on the genetic distance between the parental lines as well as the correlation between the extent of heterosis and the prediction. Highly variable heterosis results were found over mid parent and better parent for all studied traits. Among all the hybrids maximum positive heterosis over mid parent value were found in the hybrids RZ10 (42.15 %) and RZ5 (20.92 %) for yield. The hybrids RZ1 (15.90 %) and RZ6 (11.92 %) were observed to be the best two genotypes for heterosis over better parent value for yield. Correlation between the prediction on the genetic distance basis and the extent of heterosis for yield was found to be positive as 43.79 %. The hybrids RZ5 and RZ10 were found to be the best two genotypes for heterosis over mid-parent value for some plant growth traits such as main stem length, average number of harvested fruit and leaf blade dimensions.