Abstract

A set of seven promising inbred lines were involved in half-diallel mating design to study the combining ability effects for grain yield and yield contributing characters. The experimental material consisted of seven parents and their 21 crosses along with five public/private checks. Yield trials were conducted at three environments during Kharif 2015. Mean squares due to environments were highly significant for all the traits except kernels row-1 indicating that these traits were highly influenced by environment factors. Hybrids × environment and hybrids Vs parents × environment interaction was significant for ear length, grain yield and fodder yield. GCA × environment and SCA × environment (P < 0.05) interactions were significant for plant height, ear length and fodder yield traits. The magnitude of the interaction of SCA × environments is higher than GCA × environments for flowering and maturity traits, kernel rows ear-1, shelling %, 100 kernel weight, grain yield for combined analysis over three environments. GCA/SCA ratio was less than unity for all the studied traits indicating non additive gene action plays a major role in controlling the traits. Across the environments, BML-51 was a good general combiner for days to 75% dry husk, plant height, ear height, ear length, shelling %, 100 kernel weight, grain yield and fodder yield. BML-13 and BML-10 were good general combiners for flowering traits. Among the crosses, BML-51 × BML-14 had significant and positive SCA effects with high mean values in all three environments and pooled over environments for grain yield and fodder yield.

Keywords: Maize, Half-diallel, Combining ability, Environment