Assessment of Variation in Agronomical Traits among Herbicide Tolerant M3 and M4 Maize Lines

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess variation in agronomical traits among39 herbicide tolerant M3 and 37 M4 maize lines during March to July 2015 and September 2015 to January 2016 respectively. A randomised complete block in triplicates was used in the experiment. The informations were collected. on plant height, ear diameter, hundred seed weight, ear length, grains row-1 and ear-1, total ears plant-1, yield plant-1, ear height and herbicide tolerance. The information were examined using Genstat 16th edition at 5% level of significance. The outcomes revealed significant (p<0.05) variations among M3 and M4 for all traits except rows ear-1 and total ears plant-1. The highest yielding M3 and M4 lines were 520-58 and 520-38_3 recording 116.2 g plant-1 and 151.1 g plant-1 respectively but yields were lower than check varieties (165.3 g) and (183.5 g) respectively. The most herbicide tolerant M3 and M4 line were 513-12 and 520-38_3 taking 25 days and 28.5 days to ultimate death respectively. Grain yield plant-1 correlated significantly and positively with most traits in M3 while the positive and significant correlation with 100 seed weight, grains row-1 and total ears plant-1 in M4. In addition, tolerance days showed negative and highly significant correlations with plant height and ear height. Herbicide tolerance was negatively and significantly correlated with grain yield plant-1. Overall, the findings suggested that induced mutation could be a useful source of variation for plant breeding.