Combining ability evaluation in maize lines and their diallel crosses

	Combining ability evaluation in maize lines and their diallel crosses
journal of kerbala university
Article 1, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 648-658 PDF (0 K)
Abstract
A half diallel cross comprising nine inbred lines (CA21R, ZM41R, INBRED6, ZM51, INBRED12, IK8, OH40, ZM49R and INBRED21) was studied for six traits (days to 50% tasselling, plant height, leaf area, number of rows per ear, number of grains per row and grain yield per plant), to determine the nature of gene action in parents and hybrid population. The analysis of variance revealed that mean square of general combining ability (gca) and specific combining ability (sca) was significant for all characters except leaf area in case of gca, indicated the presence of additive as well as non additive gene effects for controlling the traits. However, relative magnitude of these variances indicated that dominance gene effects were more prominent for all studied characters. Parent ZM41R was the best general combiner for all characters except number of days to 50% tasselling. The crosses (CA21R x INBRED12), (ZM41R x ZM49R), (INBRED6 x ZM51), (INBRED6 x INBRED21) and (ZM51 x OH40) showing significant sca effects for larger number of traits including grain yield per plant and could be utilized for developing high yielding hybrid varieties as well as for exploiting hybrid vigor. The range of narrow sense heritability was from 2.819% to 29.334%, respectively, for leaf area and grain yield.

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