Combining Ability and Generation Mean Analyses in Quality Protein Maize Zea mays L

Abstract

In the present investigation ten parents were used. This experiment comprised of newline45 F1s, 45 F2s and their ten parental lines were planted in a Completely Randomized newlineBlock Design replicating thrice during crop season Rabi-2021-2022. Second Experiment newlineconsisting of 8 F1s, 8 F2s, 8 BC1s and 8 BC2s and their ten parental lines planted in a newlineRandomized Block Design with three replications during crop season Rabi-2021-2022 at newlineStudent Instructional Farm (SIF), CSA University of Agriculture and Technology, Kanpur. newlineThe observations were recorded on 16 metric and quality characters viz., days to newlinetasselling, days to silking, days to maturity, plant height, cob length, cob diameter, newlinenumber of grain rows per cob, number of grains per row, shelling %, 100 kernel weight, newlinegrain yield per plant, cob yield per plant, protein content (%), lysine content, tryptophan newlinein protein and seed vigour index. The analysis of variance for the experiment revealed newlinehighly significant variance among parents, hybrids, parent vs. hybrid; Fand#8321;, and F2 were also newlinefound highly significant for all traits under studies. The genetic components analysis newlinerevealed highly significant additive (D) and non-additive (and#292;and#8321; and and#292;and#8322;) components for newlinealmost all the traits in both the generations except (D) for plant height, cob length, cob newlinediameter, number of grains per row and seed vigour index in F1 and cob length, cob newlinediameter, number of grains per row and seed vigour index in F2 generations. The newlineestimates of additive (D) genetic components were lower than non-additive (and#292;and#8321; and and#292;and#8322;) newlinecomponents for all the attributes in F1 and F2 generation indicating the preponderance of newlinethe dominance components of variation. The estimate of average degree of dominance newlineindicated manifestation of over dominance for all the characters in both generations. The newlineratio (4and#119863; and#1052129; newlineand#292;1)0.5+and#119865; and#1052128;/(4and#119863; and#1052129; newlineand#292;1)0.5-and#119865; and#1052128; newlinewhich reflected the relative value of dominant and newlinerecessive genes was less than unity for days to tasselling, days to silking, plant height and newlineshelling percent in Fand#8321; and plant height, co