The objective of this study was to evaluate the combining ability, heterosis and variance components of a set of selected restorers and male sterile in sorghum for the following characters: days to 50% flowering, plant height, panicle length, grain yield per panicle, number of grains per panicle, thousand grain weight, grain breaking strength, % floaters, % water absorption, flour particle size index, rolling quality of the dough and gel spreading. Twenty parental lines - 11 male steriles and 9 restorers and their 99 hybrids formed the experimental material. parents and hybrids were palnted in adjancent trials in a RBD design with threee replications each. The combining ability analysis followed a line x tester mating system. The experiments were carried out under rainfed conditions during the rainy (kharif) and post-rainy (Rabi) seasons of 1982 at ICRISAT Center, patancheru, A.P., India. Significant variation was observed in the genotypes studied for most of the charactrs analysed. Generally the restorers showed larger variation than the male sterile lines. Significant levels of heterosis and heterobeltiosis were observed for plant height, grain yield per panicle, grain number per panicle and % floaters. Dominace was in the direction of earliness, increased height, panicle length, grain number and yield, decreased seed weight, % floaters, flour particle size and gel spreading. The results revealed that most of the agronomic and grain quality characters were highly influenced by additive gene action. (...).