IDENTIFICATION OF PROMISING PARENTAL INBRED LINES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF QUALITY PROTEIN MAIZE (ZEA MAYSL.) HYBRIDS

Line x tester analysis involving 10 quality protein inbred lines used as female and 5 QPM  as  tester was carried out to identify superior parental lines and crosses on the basis of their combining ability data of ten morphological characters viz., days to 50% silking, days to 50% tasseling, plant height, ear height, ear length, grain yield per plant, number of rows per ear, number of grains per row and 1000-grain weight along with three quality traits namely protein, tryptophan and lysine content.  Non additive gene effect was found to be important for all characters.  Among females, two lines L4 and L5 and two testers T2 and T5 were good combiners for yield and quality traits.  The hybrids L8 x L1, L10 x L2, L5 x L5, L4 x L2 and L9 x T4 were identified to be significantly better in terms of yield and quality traits.