No abstract

A set of thirty-nine hybrids of maize were developed to estimate heterosis. These hybrids were evaluated along with their respective parents and three standard checks namely, Pratap Hybrid Maize-3(PHM-3), PMH-3 and PM-9, were evaluated during Kharif 2017 for 14 characters at instructional farm Rajasthan College of Agriculture, Udaipur, Rajasthan. The mean sum of squares for hybrids, inbred lines and testers, was significant for all the traits except for days to 75 per cent brown husk of inbred lines. A perusal of estimates of economic heterosis for grain yield per plant revealed that five hybrids L7 x T2 (14.47%), L3 x T3 (11.19%), L6 x T2 (10.44%), L6 x T1 (9.93%), and L9 x T3 (9.88%) depicted positive significant economic heterosis for grain yield per plant over the best check Pratap Hybrid Maize-3. Hybrid (L6 x T2) also exhibited significant positive economic heterosis for oil content. These crosses will be considered for finding transgressive segregants in segregating generation to develop a maize variety with quality improvement.

Pearl millet is a widely grown, climate resilient rainfed cereal crop cultivated on 29 million ha in the arid and semi-arid tropical regions of Asia and Africa accounting for almost half of global millet production. It is useful for minimizing the adverse effect of climate change, hence facilitating income and food security among farming communities. It has deep root system and exhibit climate-resilient features including adaptation to a wide range of ecological conditions, less irrigational requirements, better growth and productivity in low nutrient input conditions, less dependent on synthetic fertilizers and minimum vulnerability to environmental stresses and thus can survive in harsh climatic conditions, less fertile soil under water scarcity. Breeding of drought tolerant varieties and selecting genotypes for better water use efficiency is important in pearl millet to mitigate the changing climatic scenario. In this study, 24 genotypes of pearl millet which are drought tolerant and specific for A1 zone were characterized using 15 drought specific SSR primers. All the 15 SSRs amplified products of varying sizes ranging between 90-550 bp. A total of 40 alleles were obtained in this study and the number of alleles per locus varied between 2 to 5 with an average of 2.67 alleles. Polymorphic Information Content (PIC) varied from 0.34 to 0.76 with an average of 0.53 PIC value. This study will be useful for developing high yielding, dual purpose cultivars for low rainfall areas i.e. A1 zone and increasing pearl millet productivity.

Sixty eight genotypes of maize (48 hybrids, 16 parents and 4 checks were evaluated under three different environments to test their stability. Variance due to genotypes, environments and genotype x environment interactions were found significant for oil content, starch content and protein content. Regression approach by Eberhart and Russel 1966 used to investigate the nature of G x E interaction and for identifying genotypes possessing general and specific adaption. None of the hybrids had stability for all quality traits. For Grain Starch content hybrid EI-1155-1 x EI-2416, for oil content hybrid EI-670-2 x EI-2403 and for Protein content hybrids EI-2187 x EI-2403, EI-536-3 x EI-2403, EI-2176 x EI-561-2,EI-2173 x EI561-7 had higher mean values, non significant deviation from regression and regression coefficient around unity (bi=1) indicating the stable performance in different environment and wider adaptability.