Evaluation of seed germination and seedling vigour for single cross maize hybrids along with parental lines

Abstract

In order to evaluate single cross maize hybrids for their seed quality, an experiment was carried out with nine maize inbred lines, one tester and nine single cross hybrids with one check (Indra 17). It was observed that seed size of single cross hybrids were larger than their parental lines seeds except L3. Larger and medium size seeds of hybrids had higher germination percentage and vigour than that of small size seeds of parental lines. The highest physiological performance in terms of seed germination and vigour quality parameters in terms of seedling length and weight, vigour index, mean daily germination, relative growth rate, germination index, coefficient of germination and germinative value along with peak value was found in single cross hybrids C8, C6 and C4. Lower mean germination time was reflected as greater vigour and had lesser value for single cross maize hybrids over the parental lines except L1.