Abstract
ABSTRACT Compared with the common corn, popcorn shows greater susceptibility to pests and diseases occurrence, being the use of resistant cultivars the most efficient strategy. In this regard, Germplasm Banks deserve special attention because they contain accessions that can be used as sources of resistance in breeding programs. The State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro (UENF) maintains a popcorn Germplasm Bank with accessions from tropical and temperate countries, including Diversity Centers for the species. In this study, we investigated the performance of 37 popcorn accessions landraces, hybrids, and inbreed lines ― from the Germplasm Collection of UENF’s Popcorn Breeding Program with respect to the fungal leaf diseases northern leaf blight (NLB) and southern leaf blight (SLB), caused by Exserohilum turcicum and Bipolaris maydis, aiming to select promising accessions for genetic resistance to be used in future crosses to generate new resistant cultivars for farmers. The dendrogram scattering by the UPGMA multivariate technique was efficient in discriminating resistant accessions. Satisfactory results were obtained for resistance to NLB in accessions L71, L75, L76, P7, and PARA-172, which can thus be considered remarkable sources of resistance. For resistance to SLB, the superior accessions that can be indicated as sources of resistance are ARZM-05083, ARZM-07049, and PARA-172.
Highlights
Popcorn (Zea mays L.) is a type of corn whose main characteristics are its hard and small kernels and the ability to expand due to the pressure formed inside the grains upon heating
In this study we investigated the performance of 37 popcorn genotypes with respect to fungal leaf diseases caused by E. turcicum and B. maydis and to select promising genotypes with genetic resistance to be used in future popcorn breeding programs, aiming to generate new resistant cultivars for farmers
A good source of resistance was found to northern leaf blight (NLB) through accessions L71, L75, L76, P7 and PARA-172, which can be considered remarkable sources of resistance
Summary
Popcorn (Zea mays L.) is a type of corn whose main characteristics are its hard and small kernels and the ability to expand due to the pressure formed inside the grains upon heating. Under favorable climatic settings and in susceptible hosts, the pathogen may cause loses in grain yield that range from 27 to 90% (Ferguson and Carson 2007; Muiru et al 2010; Wang et al 2010; 2012) Another disease, the southern leaf blight (SLB), caused by the fungus Bipolaris maydis (Nisik.) Shoemaker Southern leaf blight is one of the most important diseases affecting corn and represents a great threat to corn growing all around the globe (Altaf et al 2016; Kump et al 2011; Noor et al 2015) Under certain conditions, this fungus dramatically reduces the stand and yield of crops, with losses that can be as high as 70% (Ali et al 2011; Hussain et al 2016). The factors determining the magnitude of losses are the growth stage of the crop, the susceptible varieties, and the planting time (Ali et al 2011)
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