1Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Madurai, India
2Department of Biotechnology, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Madurai, India
3Department of Plant Biotechnology, Center for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
4Department of Millets, Center for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India
5Department of Plant Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Center for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India
The number of genes controlling the traits and the nature of gene action are the important criteria for the selection of individual traits in a segregating population. The current study is focused to analyze the skewness and kurtosis in the backcross population of UMI1200β+ × HKI163 and UMI1230β+ × HKI163. The BC2F2 population showed positive skewness and platykurtic distribution for plant height. In the present study the dominant × dominant based complementary gene action played a role and more number of genes controlled the plant height. Hence, rigorous selection is needed to achieve the genetic gain in the later generation. The negative skewness and platykurtic distribution was recorded for single plant yield in UMI1200β+ × HKI163 which indicated the duplicate gene action and required mild selection to fix the individual traits for rapid genetic gain.
Maize, gene action, skewness, kurtosis, marker assisted backcross breeding
