Genetic relative importance of some pheno-morphological traits in half diallel crosses of yellow maize (zea mays l.)‎ under different environments

Abstract EN

Three pheno-morphological and yield properties in a set of 15 F1 hybrids directed from six inbred lines of maize (Zea mays L.) produced in 2008 at the Maize Researches Department and evaluated in 2009 at three Agriculture Scientific Research Centers at Hama (L1), Aleppo (L2) and Dir Al-Zour (L3).

The results indicated that all estimates of additive (VA) and dominance (VD) variance were significant for most of the investigated traits at the three locations except at L2 for plant height and grain yield as well as ear height at L2 and L3.

However, the magnitude of VD values were larger than VA at all environments and data where combined, for plant height and grain yield except plant height at L1, L3 and in combined data where VD values larger than of VA.

Moderate to high narrow sense heritability estimates for silking date at three locations (52%, 70% and 85% for L1, L2 and L3, respectively).

While, such estimates were moderate to low in most cases for plant height (36%, 31% and 62% for L1, L3 and L3, respectively), as well as ear height (31%, 9% and 4% for L1, L2 and L3, respectively) and grain yield (53%, 12% and 21% for L1, L3, respectively).

Results of phenotypic correlation and path coefficient analysis showed that the characteristics studied had low relative importance however, it was probably due to other factors not included in this study especially yield components.