Genetic Diversity for Yield and Yield Contributing Characters of Short Statured Maize Inbred Lines

Abstract

Genetic diversity is one of the useful tools to select appropriate lines for hybridization. Twenty short-statured maize inbred lines were taken for present study, which were collected from CIMMYT India and Mexico through Plant Breeding Division, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Gazipur. This experiment was conducted from November 2015 to April 2016 to identify parental lines to produce single cross short statured maize hybrids. From the genetic diversity studies, the importance of both additive and non-additive gene actions for the expression of yield and yield contributing characters were found. Values of vector I and II revealed that both the vectors had positive values for date of silking, plant height, rows/cob, grains/row and yield. These results indicated that these five characters had highest contribution towards divergence. Based on the relative magnitude of D 2 values; 20 inbred lines were grouped into five clusters. Seven inbred lines were selected on the basis of genetic diversity and per se performance which will be crossed separately in a half-diallel fashion to develop hybrids.