Document Type : Original Article
Author
Department of Field Crops and Medicinal Plants – College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences - Salahaddin University – Erbil - Iraq
Abstract
Iraq's low maize productivity is primarily due to the use of inferior seeds, weak management, high input rates, infestations of shoot flies and maize borer, extremely high temperatures, and stalk rot. Due to the lack of locally developed single-cross hybrid varieties, maize growers purchase imported seeds at a high price, resulting in a high production cost. For that reason, genetic parameters and genetic differences are essential for the emergence or evolution of a new variety adaptability, and survival. The present study indicated that HEY, DEY, HED, and DED showed high h2B and high GA, which are important characteristics to consider for selecting maize single-cross hybrids. This indicated that these characteristics are controlled by additive genes. The PCV was higher than the GCV for all characters studied. This indicates the effect of the environment on the hybrids studied. The current investigation has also revealed a high level of genetic diversity, which has implications for maize germplasm characterization, conservation initiatives, and breeding programs aimed at categorizing maize single cross hybrids. The hybrids under study were split into four different groups according to the performance of agro-morphological traits suggesting that the hybrids have a varied genetic background. It can be concluded that the single-cross hybrids examined were influenced by environmental factors as revealed by genetic parameters and there was a large degree of genetic variability among them based on agro-morphological features as revealed by CA and PCA. Therefore, selecting hybrids with the highest h2B and high GA and their position in different clusters is important to generate profitable varieties.
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