Abstract
Pests can strongly affect the maize yield in tropical regions. Objective of this work was to evaluate the performance for fall armyworm resistance in a set of maize populations tested under different environments and to determinate the possibility of int roducing some of these populations into maize breeding programs. The trials were carried out in three naturally pest-infested environmen ts. The populations were evaluated for plant (PH) and ear height (EH), grain yield (Y), and fall armyworm-resistance (FAR). Significant differences among the populations were observed for Y and FAR, besides a significant genotype x environment interaction. The ge notype x environment interaction for FAR could be explained by the erratic performance across the environments presented by one of the tolerant populations. Our results attested that at least one of the tested populations could be included into the maize breeding program .
Highlights
Maize is considered one of the most important commodity crops in the world and sometimes shows different sensitivity degrees to environmental stresses (Llanos Company 1984)
Despite the great genetic variability in maize, little information is available on the germplasm or the metabolic pathway utilized by these sources
Focusing on the last alternative, the objective of this work was to evaluate the performance of a set of tropical maize populations under different environmental conditions tested under natural fall armyworm infestation and to determine the possibility of introducing some of these populations into breeding programs
Summary
Maize is considered one of the most important commodity crops in the world and sometimes shows different sensitivity degrees to environmental stresses (Llanos Company 1984). According to Constabel (1999), some plants show a set of biochemical defense mechanisms with the capacity of detaining, poisoning, or starving pests or other herbivores that feed on them This defense strategy involves the rapid accumulation of proteins or phytochemicals that posses the capacity of preventing or reducing herbivore damage. The use of proteins as defense mechanism has an advantage over phytochemicals because proteins are encoded by a single gene, which can be isolated and used to obtain genetically engineered crops (Estruch et al 1997). This situation could lead to a less durable resistance. The complexity of the metabolic pathways determines the presence of gene complexes resulting in a quantitative, more durable resistance
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