Genetic Analysis of some inbred lines and its F1 Crosses of Red and Yellow Maize for Earliness and Morpho-Physiological Traits Under Water-Deficit Condition

Abdel-Moneam, Maamoun Ahmed; Seadh, Saleh; Kandil, Ahmed; Abdel-Moneam, Soliman

doi:10.36531/ijds.2026.191980

	Genetic Analysis of some inbred lines and its F1 Crosses of Red and Yellow Maize for Earliness and Morpho-Physiological Traits Under Water-Deficit Condition
IRAQI JOURNAL OF DESERT STUDIES
Volume 16, Issue 1 - Serial Number 16, July 2026, Pages 16-33 PDF (1.33 M)
Document Type: Research Paper
DOI: 10.36531/ijds.2026.191980
Authors
Maamoun Ahmed Abdel-Moneam^* ¹; Saleh Seadh²; Ahmed Kandil²; Soliman Abdel-Moneam²
¹Agron. Dept., Fac. of Agric., Mansoura Univ., Egypt
²Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Mansoura University, Egypt.
Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate the combining ability and type of gene action for eight inbred lines of red and yellow maize and their half-diallel crosses for earliness and morpho-physiological traits under normal and water-deficit. For every examined earliness and morpho-physiological trait under both normal and drought-stress conditions, the mean squares for general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability were highly significant. This suggests that both additive and non-additive gene effects are important in the inheritance of these traits. The GCA/SCA (Baker ratio) ratio was less than unity for all examined earliness and morpho-physiological traits under both normal and drought-stress conditions, indicating that the inheritance of these qualities was mostly impacted by non-additive genetic factors, which were more important. For the majority of earliness and morpho-physiological features under drought stress, P1 (Red-A), P2 (Red-B), P4 (L-6), and P5 (L-49) were the best general combiners. Heritability in the board sense was more than 0.82 for the morpho-physiological and earliness characteristics under normal irrigation and water stress situations, emphasizing the importance of the dominant influence rather than additive. Narrow sense heritability estimates (h²n.s) under normal irrigation and water stress conditions were found to be significantly lower than those of broad sense because the majority of genetic variance for all studied traits was due to non-additive genetic effects. This led to the conclusion that selection procedures that are known to be effective in shifting gene frequency when both additive and non-additive traits are present should be used.
Keywords
Combining ability; Drought; Genetic Components; Heritability; Maize

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