Vol. 9, Special Issue 10, Part K (2025)

The present investigation aimed to estimate the combining ability of parents and hybrids in Capsicum annuum L. over the three different locations of Gujarat, under the jurisdiction of Anand Agricultural University (AAU) during Kharif-rabi 2024-25. The experimental materials consisted of 37 genotypes comprising 28 hybrids developed using half diallel mating design, eight parental genotypes and one standard check GAVCH-1. The analysis of variance for combining ability across three environments revealed highly significant mean squares for both GCA and SCA for all studied traits indicating the involvement of both additive and non-additive gene action to their expression. However, characters viz. days to 50% flowering, plant height, number of branches per plant, fruits per plant, average fruit length, average fruit girth, pedicel length, average fruit weight, fruit yield per plant, test weight, chlorophyll content and ascorbic acid content exhibited GCA/SCA ratios less than 1, showed the predominance of non-additive gene action. Based on the general combining ability analysis, the parental lines ACS-18-03, G-4, ACS-20-20 and ACS-20-22 were found to be good general combiners and hybrids G-4 × GP-20, GVC-101 × ACS-18-03, and ACS-18-03 × ACS-20-20 emerged as the top specific combiners for fruit yield per plant, suggesting the presence of favorable non-additive gene action in these combinations. The inclusion of ACS-18-03 in two of these top-performing crosses further underlines its versatility as a parental line and its potential role in enhancing yield through hybridization.