Netra Hiremath¹ , G. Shantakumar¹ , Sateesh Adiger¹ , Laxman malkannavar² , Prakash Gangashetty¹

1 Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, college of agriculture, UAS Dharwad, India
2 Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, GKVK, UAS Bangalore, India
Author    Correspondence author
Molecular Plant Breeding, 2013, Vol. 4, No. 6   doi: 10.5376/mpb.2013.04.0006
Received: 18 Jan., 2013    Accepted: 22 Jan., 2013    Published: 30 Jan., 2013

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

 

Netra H., et al., 2013, Heterosis Breeding for Maturity, Yield and Quality Characters in Maize (Zea mays L.), Molecular Plant Breeding, Vol.4, No.6 44-49 (doi: 10.5376/mpb.2013.04.0006)

The utility of diallel crosses for identification superior combinations is a common in maize breeding programme. This methodology allows the estimation of combining ability of the parents being evaluated also extent of heterosis in respect to maturity, grain yield and quality traits. The experiment conducted using fourteen newly developed inbred and crossed in half diallel mating design (excluding reciprocals) during summer 2011 at MARS, Dharwad and developed 91 crosses. Ninety one F₁ crosses of maize derived by diallel mating design involving fourteen inbred lines (excluding reciprocals) were studied to investigate heterosis over best check NK 6240 for maturity characters, yield characters and quality parameters. The crosses, 13x6, 7x6, 9x6 and 13x7 showed desirable heterosis for earliness i.e for days to 50% tasseling and for 50 % maturity. For the character grain yield per plant, crosses, 9x5, 10x7, 4x3, 8x7 and 14x10 showed significant heterosis over better parent and standard check in positive direction, these better performing crosses/hybrids can be exploited for exploiting hybrid vigour. Crosses, 10x3, 10x9, 11x10 and 10x3, 9x3, 7x3 showed heteosis in favourable direction over better parent and standard check.

Maize (Zea mays L.); Diallel cross; Standard heterosis; Heterobeltosis; Inbred lines