Abstract
Cultivar mixtures have been suggested as a mean to achieve increased crop productivity. By choosing cultivars that complement each other for performance of important traits, mixtures could be formulated to meet specific production requirements. In this paper, mixing ability and inter-genotypic competition from 7×7 mechanical diallel mixtures excluding reciprocals of Mungbean (Vigna radiata L.) were studied, during March to Mid June 2008, at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University (SAU) farm under two experimental sets which provided for intrarow and inter row mixing of genotypes in biblend, designated respectively as Set I and Set II, as well as uniblend stand in both sets. The mean performance analysis showed that the genotype BD-6893 has the best performance for most of the vitally important characters such as pods/plant, seeds/plant and yield/plant. In respect of biblend mixture, the biblend BD-6901+BD-6922 was found as the best biblend mixture for different characters. Averaged biblends were 1.35% higher yielding than the mean yield of their uniblend components. For grain yield, performance in biblends was highly correlated with the average of the two component uniblends. The genotype BD-6906 had a good mixing ability for different yield and yield contributing characters as pods/plant, pod length, seeds/pod, yield/plant etc. in the both experimental sets. The mixture (biblend) BD-6901+BD-6922, BD-6893+BD-6901 and BD-6921+BD-6922 were found to be a good specific mixer for different characters. Diallel analysis of mixing ability, analogous to genetic analysis of combining ability, demonstrated that uniblends differed in their ability to determine grain yield in biblends. The ability to predict biblend performance based on uniblend performance, together with the potential for above average grain yield, suggested that biblends can be formulated to achieve specific production requirements.
