Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.
General and specific combining abilities were estimated for ear and grain characters in maize using 6-parent diallel cross excluding reciprocals. Variation due to general combining ability (gca) was highly significant for ear length, ear diameter, ear and cob weight/plant, kernel depth, and 100-kernel weight. Specific combining ability (sca) was very important for kernel depth and ear diameter. Variation due to gca was more pronounced than due to sca indicating the importance of additive gene effects.
Gea, sea, maize
