1Director of Research, GKVK, UAS, Bangalore-560 065, Karnataka, India
2Associate Director of Research, Zonal Agricultural Research Station, V. C. Farm, Mandya-571 405, Karnataka, India
Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, G. K. V. K. University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore-560 065, Karnataka, India
*(e-mail: venki_gpb@rediffmail.com.)
Online published on 19 March, 2018.
The present study was conducted to assess the general combining ability effects of parents and specific combining ability effects of hybrids for drought tolerant and grain yield traits in maize and explore their use in moisture stress tolerance hybrid development. Previously identified 10 drought tolerant lines and seven drought susceptible testers (these parents were identified based on four drought tolerant traits viz., SPAD chlorophyll meter reading (SCMR), specific leaf area (SLA), anthesis silking interval (ASI), carbon isotope discrimination (Δ13C) were crossed in line x tester design. Seventy F1s generated by crossing these were evaluated. The ratio of sca/gca variance revealed that there was preponderance of non-additive gene action in the expression of all the traits under study. Inbred lines viz., SKV-70, CML-407 among lines and SKV-57 and SKV-19 among testers were good general combiners for drought tolerant, yield and yield attributing characters. Among the hybrids, NAI-156 x SKV-5, NAI-147 x SKV-19 and CML-407 x SKV-19 exhibited highest significant sca effects for drought tolerant traits and NAI-148 x CML-322, NAI-156 x SKV-57, CML-249 x HKI-1040 for yield and yield attributing traits. The conditional probability of crosses with higher specific combining ability was higher when at least one of their parents had high general combining ability.
Anthesis silking interval, Carbon isotope discrimination, SPAD chlorophyll meter reading, Specific leaf area
