PREETI SHARMA*, M. C. KAMBOJ AND NARENDER SINGH
Regional Research Station, CCS Haryana Agricultural University
Karnal-132 001 (Haryana), India
*(e-mail : sharmapreeti.genetics@gmail.com)
(Received : 29 April 2020; Accepted : 12 May 2020)
SUMMARY
The experiment was conducted to develop and evaluate six single cross hybrids and their F2 populations developed from crossing and selfing between five inbred lines of maize at experimental area of CCS Haryana Agricultural University Regional Research Station, Uchani, Karnal during both the growing seasons of 2014-16 to estimate correlation analysis for the generations viz., parents (P1 and P2), F1, F2 and back crosses (BC1 and BC2) in six crosses for 15 quantitative traits. Correlation is an important in estimating the relative importance of various characters on grain yield. From the association analysis it was found that grain yield per plant showed significant positive correlation with days to 50% taselling, days to 50% silking, days to maturity, plant height, ear height, cob length, cob diameter, number of grains per cob, 100 grain weight, shelling percentage and lysine content whereas it was found significant negative with protein and starch content. Protein content had significant negative correlation with tryptophan content and tryptophan is significantly positively correlated with lysine content. It was imperative that plant height having strong positive correlation with grain yield was found promising in all the six crosses studied, thus considered as important selection criteria in improving hybrid maize for high grain yield, fodder yield and quality on the basis of association among other characters also. All the six crosses and specially their selected F2 plants are of great importance for population development programme for the development of inbreds and hybrids from the F2 population by crossing promising genotypes on the basis of per se performance.
Key words:Association analysis, correlation, yield, quality, maize