By: Swapan K. Tripathy, D. R. Mishra, G. B. Dash, N. Senapati, D. Mishra, P. K. Nayak, S. K. Mohanty, S. Dash, Kartik Pradhan, D. Swain, P. M. Mohapatra, S. Panda, M. R. Mohanty
India shares largest area under sesame and ranked second largest producer of sesame seeds in the world. Sesame seeds contain about 50-60% oil and it is considered as the queen of high quality vegetable oils. A diallel analysis was therefore carried out involving 12 diverse parental genotypes of sesame to study gene action and select appropriate parents/crosses using combining ability analysis. The magnitude of GCA effects were invariably higher than SCA effects for all characters including seed yield and oil content indicating preponderance of additive gene action for inheritance of the traits.