Studies on genetic potential of baby corn (Zea mays L.) hybrids for yield and quality traits

  • M. Dhasarathan, C. Babu, K. Iyanar and K. Velayudham
Keywords: Baby corn, heterosis, heritability and quality traits

Abstract

Baby corn is a profitable crop that allows a diversification of production, aggregation of value and increased income, and estimation of heterosis is helpful in checking the performance of parents in hybrid combination. A set of 21 baby corn single crosses were developed through diallel mating design following Model-I, Method-II of Griffing (1956) and were evaluated along with their parental inbred lines and one check variety to assess the possibility of exploiting heterosis for baby corn yield in baby corn and to identify traits having high heritability for using as selection parameter in baby corn development. High heterotic effects were observed for plant height, number of baby corn per plant, baby corn weight, baby corn yield per plot, reducing sugars and non reducing sugars. Estimates of broad sense heritability also varied with characters. High herita-bility coupled with genetic advance as per cent of mean were shown by most of the traits viz., plant height, number of baby corns per plant, baby corn length, baby corn weight, total sugars, reducing sugars, non reducing sugars and baby corn yield per plot indicating a substantial amount of genetic variation in this population of hybrids and none of the traits showed low or negligible heritability. Based on the overall performance of the hybrids FDM 7 x FDM 14 was found to have high genetic potential as it exhibited heterosis for certain important characteristics of baby corn.
Published
30-09-2012
How to Cite
M. Dhasarathan, C. Babu, K. Iyanar and K. Velayudham
Studies on genetic potential of baby corn Zea mays L. hybrids for yield and quality traits. 2012. Electronic Journal of Plant Breeding, 3 3, 853-860. Retrieved from https://www.ejplantbreeding.org/index.php/EJPB/article/view/439
Section
Research Article