1Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, 641 003, Tamil Nadu, India
2CIMMYT, ICRISAT Campus, Patancheru, 502 324, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, 580 005, Karnataka, India
*Corresponding Author: R. M. Kachapur, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, India, E-Mail: kachapurr@uasd.in
Online published on 10 August, 2023.
An experiment was conducted to study the genetic mechanism of Turcicum leaf blight (TLB) in maize. A set of 56 experimental F1 hybrids was screened for TLB under artificial inoculation condition along with standard susceptible and resistant checks. The results revealed that, the inheritance of TLB resistance is majorly governed by additive gene action, while the preponderance of non-additive gene action was displayed by grain yield. The TLB resistance had high narrow sense of heritability. The genetic analysis of parents and hybrids showed sufficient variation for TLB resistance among the studied material. The lines CTLB-01 and CTLB-02 exhibited a high general combining ability effect in a negative direction for Area Under Disease Progressive Curve and percent disease index, which were identified as novel source of durable resistance for TLB. The GGE biplot analysis showed that CTLB-01 and CTLB-02 were genetically similar for disease resistance and IMIC-68 was identified as ideal tester for disease resistance. The CTLB-02 × IMIC-02 and CTLB-02 × IMIC-40 are best crosses for TLB resistance and grain yield. The present findings suggested that the resistance to TLB can be improved through recurrent selection.
