Ramachandra et al. HETEROSIS STUDIESON YIELD AND QUALITY PARAMETERS IN BIDI TOBACCO (Nicotianatabacum L.)

Tobacco is one of the important commercial crops in the world. It has various types such as Flue Cured Virginia, Hookah, Cigar type, Lanka type Bidi type etc. All these are categorized based on their quality and consumption purpose. Among these Bidi tobacco is more widely grown in Pakistan and in India. The genetic work on the bidi tobacco quality parameters is very much limited. In this connection this work has been carried out in Agriculture research Station Nipaniat Belgaum district in Karnataka. In this investigation six lines and eight testers were used to generate the F1 hybrids in all possible cross combination with line x tester design. Thus total experimental materials consists of 62 genotypes. All these genotypes were grown in lattice design with three replication.Various characters observed for their genetic analysis viz Days to flower, Plant height (cm), Inter nodal length (cm), Numbers of leaves,Leaf length (cm), Leaf breadth (cm) Total dry weight (g/plant), stalk weight (gg/plant) and Leaf yield (g/plant) these quantitative traits were recorded from the field at vegetative stage.The quality traits such as nicotine content, spangles scrore