Agricultural Science Digest

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Agricultural Science Digest, volume 42 issue 2 (april 2022) : 159-164

Study of Combining Ability and Heterosis in Quality Protein Maize using Line x Tester Mating Design

Vaskar Subba, Anirban Nath, Sabyasachi Kundagrami, Amitava Ghosh
1Department of Seed Science and Technology, Institute of Agricultural Science, University of Calcutta, Kolkata-700 019, West Bengal, India.
Cite article:- Subba Vaskar, Nath Anirban, Kundagrami Sabyasachi, Ghosh Amitava (2022). Study of Combining Ability and Heterosis in Quality Protein Maize using Line x Tester Mating Design. Agricultural Science Digest. 42(2): 159-164. doi: 10.18805/ag.D-5460.

Background: High protein content with good quality maize is likely to gain wider acceptance if hybrids are produced that have agronomic performance similar to normal hybrids and retain an enhanced nutritional quality. Thus, an attempt was made to develop quality protein maize hybrids for the benefit of different sections of society depending on maize.
Methods: During the Rabi season of 2016-17 (hybrids were obtained crossing ten inbred lines and four testers following Line x Tester mating design) and 2017-18 (evaluation of hybrids and parents involved along with two commercial checks based on different agro-morphological traits).
Result: Highly significant differences were observed among lines, testers and crosses. Combining ability revealed SCA variances was higher indicating preponderance of non-additive gene action. The contribution of line x tester interaction was higher suggesting parents used in this study can provide high heterotic cross combinations. The parents CML 508, CML 163-D and CML 169 were superior general combiners, indicating their efficacy as parents in future maize breeding programs. Heterosis identified superior yield advantage of the crosses namely, CML508 x CML154-2, CML170 x CML169 and CML163-D x DMRQPM103 over the standard commercial checks HQPM1 and 900 M Gold.


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