Abstract

RODRIGUEZ PEREZ, Gilberto et al. Genetic parameters and combining ability of corn lines for grain. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2020, vol.11, n.8, pp.1867-1878.  Epub Dec 13, 2021. ISSN 2007-0934.  https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v11i8.2085.

The general combining ability (GCA) and the specific (SCA) are used to identify hybrid combinations between parents with higher or lower yield than the expected average behavior of the progenitor lines. The objective of this study was to evaluate the GCA of 7 lines as female (H) and 4 male lines (M); as well as the SCA of the 28 crosses made; as a hypothesis it was proposed that crosses between lines with contrasting characteristics will produce outstanding hybrids. The obtaining of the lines with an inbreeding level of S3, the crosses and evaluation of the latter was carried out in the Experimental Field of the Faculty of Agronomy of the Autonomous University of Nuevo León, Mexico, the simple crosses were evaluated in an experimental design of complete blocks at random with three repetitions. Genetic analysis was performed with Comstock and Robinson’s North Carolina mating design II. The parents that presented the highest yields were M2 (8.12 t ha-1) and M4 (7.9 t ha-1) considered as males and as H3 and H5 females (8.13 t ha-1) both with the same yield; however, the greatest effects of GCA were in M2 (0.19), M1 (0.08), H4 (0.14) and H2 (0.13) in grain yield. The greatest effects on SCA were observed in the crosses H4xM2 (1.17 t ha-1), H6xM3 (0.84 t ha-1) and H2xM3 (0.58 t ha-1). In the genetic parameters for grain yield, the environmental variance exceeded the additive and dominance variance, the heritability in the broad and narrow sense were 87.14 and 52.15%, respectively.

Keywords : combinatorial capacity; crosses; inbred lines; males and females.