Effects of Heterosis on Agronomically Important Traits of Oriental Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) Hybrids

This experiment was conducted to determine heterosis effects in crosses between different oriental tobacco varieties in tokat province of turkey. hybrids were produced from half-diallel crosses between xanthi-2a, nail, gümüshacıköy, tasova, katerini, canik and erbaa tobacco varieties in 2012. the experiment was conducted based on 7 parents (p_1 and p_2) and their 21 f_1 populations during 2013 and 2014 tobacco growing seasons in the condition of kazova/tokat. heterosis effects with regards to the plant height, leaf width, leaf length, number of leaves, leaf yield, nicotine and sugar rates were calculated. the average increases due to the heterosis behavior were 28.4% and 4.4% for cured leaf yield and plant height, respectively. in addition, hybrids had about 16.6% less sugar and10% more nicotine in cured leaves.