Inheritance of the delayed senescence in maize

Abstract

The objective of this research was to study the inheritance of delayed senescence in maize. Partial diallel crosses among 50 inbred lines and five testers were made. The 250 crosses, along with six commercial hybrids used as checks, were evaluated at eight environments in lattices 16x16 with two replications per environment. The diallel crosses were analyzed following the method 4 model 1 of Griffing, extended to multiple environments. The contribution of the general combining ability (CGA) for the expression of the stay-green trait (69.06%) was greater than the specific combining ability (SCA) (30.94%), showing that additive effects are more important than non-additive effects for the expression of this trait. Both GCA and SCA interacted significantly with the environments, indicating that the selection for this trait should be based on the means across environments.

Zea mays; SCA; GCA; diallel crossing; stay-green