Haitham A. Sattar Saeid*(1) Azeez H. Majeed(1) and Aziz S. Shallal(1)
(1). Breeding and development Plant Center, Agricultural Directorate, Ministry of Science and Technology, Iraq.
(*Corresponding author: Haitham A. Sattar Saied. E-Mail: abd.hethem@yahoo.com).
Received: 19/09/2019 Accepted: 20/11/2019
Abstract
The study used half diallel cross among six inbred lines of maize namely (1) DP198, (2) WA245, (3) HK258, (4) SA266, (5) AH401 and (6) IK58 were used. The seeds of inbred lines and its single cross hybrids were grown in an experiment using randomized completely block design (RCBD) with three replicates at a field of Research Center of Plant Breeding Improvement (AL-Latefea Station(, during fall season of 2017 to evaluate the hybrids and to estimate heterosis and their general and specific combining ability. The studied characters were; days number to silking and tasseling 75%, plant height, ear diameter and length, number of rows per ear, number of grains per ear, 300 – kernel weight, yield per plant and protein and oil percentages. Some hybrids showed significant heterosis for most studied traits, for the single cross (1× 5) it reached (3.3) for days number of tasseling, and (127.7) for yield per plant. The squares mean of general and specific combining abilities at 0.01 level were highly significant for all traits except protein percentage, which did not appear a significance for general combining ability. Parents differed in their general combining ability effects, the results showed that the parent (6) had positive significant effects for most of the studied traits. So, the two lines (1 and 5) could be used in single hybrid production with desired traits, thereby using hybrid breeding.
Key words: Diallel cross, Single crosses, Heterosis, Combining ability.
Full Paper in Arabic: PDF