Variability and heritability studies both in parents and hybrids revealed the existence of significant differences for all the characteristics indicating wide variability among the genotypes. In general, the parents registered higher mean values for all the quality traits studied, suggesting that parents were superior in quality than the hybrids. Low to moderate estimates of variability, moderate to high heritability and low expected genetic advance for all the quality characters indicated the preponderance of both additive and non-additive gene effects in conditioning these traits. Hence, both these genetic components could be exploited effectively by practicing reciprocal recurrent selection.