Abstract
The experiment was carried out in the Field Dept. of Hort. & Landscape Design, College of Agric. & Forestry , Mosul University , during growing seasons 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 , using Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications , to evaluate the performance of Full-Diallel hybrids and their four varieties in faba bean viz, 1- French (Aguadulce) 2- Syrian (Shami) 3- Spain and 4-Holland to determine the best parental combinations through estimating the effects of general and specific combining abilities of the used genotypes according to (Griffing, 1956) first method and fixed model. The results indicated that general combining ability was significant for all studied characters and that specific combining ability was significant for most studied characters. The reciprocal effects was significant for all studied characters except for no. of pods per plant. The results showed that general combining ability components was higher than that of specific combining ability for: plant height , no. of branches per plant , no. of days to flowering , pod length and 100 seed weight , which indicated the presence of additive gene action for these characters. French and Syrian varieties showed high general combining ability for most of the studied characters , and therefore contains the desired gene. The hybrids varied for their specific combining abilities effects and this due to the wide genetic diversity between their parents.
