In sugarcane and many other crops, crossing of varieties stand as the best was to generate variations for breeding and selection purposes. The research aimed to examine the performance of the reciprocal crosses in comparison with their bi-parental crosses. Twenty four bi-parental crosses were evaluated in a randomized complete design, at the breeding nursery of Sugarcane Research Institute, Yunnan Academy, China. The results showed significant differences among many entries for all studied traits. High values of GCV and PCV were associated with moderate heritability for number of stalks, while moderate estimates were with high heritability for stalk length. The results showed that reciprocal crosses R3 and R6 outclassed their crosses for all studied traits, which suggest their relevance for sugarcane breeding and selection purposes.

Keywords: heritability, coefficient of variation, seedling, genotype, breeding, selection.