Abstract
Chlorophyll closely related to photosynthetic capacity and developmental stage in crops. In order to reveal the genetic characters of chlorophyll content in leaf above ear, ear leaf and leaf under ear (three-ear-leaves) of maize, ten inbred lines from five different heterotic groups were selected to make crosses by a completely diallel cross design. The combining ability analysis and genetic parameters estimations of chlorophyll content of three-ear-leaves were carried out. The results showed that highly differences existed among ninety F1 crosses including reciprocal crosses, the general combining ability (GCA) effects and special combining ability (SCA) effects were different and p<0.01. The inbred lines No.10 (Xu178), 1(Ye478) and 7(Dan340) were observed with positive GCA effects while other inbred lines showed negative GCA effects. The crosses 4×9 (Chang7-2×8085Tai) and 6×9 (Zi330×8085Tai) with significantly positive SCA effects were found. The cross 4×6 (Chang7-2×Zi330) appeared maximum negative SCA effect for three-ear-leaves investigated in this study. The GCA effect of inbred lines was not corresponding to the SCA effect. The correlation coefficients between three-ear-leaves were all more than 0.7 which were highly positive correlations. Chlorophyll content showed reciprocal crosses differences (p<0.05). Broad sense heritability and narrow sense heritability were about 55 and 33.5% respectively. The additive effect was greater importance than non-additive effect. Key words: Maize, chlorophyll content, reciprocal effect, heritability.
Highlights
Combining ability of inbred lines, is widely and extensively used to evaluate the genetic nature of quantitatively inherited traits in maize
The highly significance was exist among the crosses due to the diverse nature of the selecting inbred lines
The variance between replications was no statistical difference for three-ear-leaves, which indicated uniform fertility in the field trial
Summary
Combining ability of inbred lines, is widely and extensively used to evaluate the genetic nature of quantitatively inherited traits in maize. During the process of analysis for combining ability, the two main genetic parameters general combining ability (GCA) and special combining ability (SCA) which had been defined (Sprague and Tatum, 1942). The variance of GCA is usually considered to be an indicator of the extent of additive type of gene action, whereas SCA is taken as the measure of non- additive type of gene actions. The results of several researches showed that the yield and some yield components were due to variance of GCA and SCA (Sedhom, 1994; AlNaggar et al, 2002; Alamnie et al, 2006; El-Badawy, 2013; Hefny, 2010).
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