Study of genetic components in various maize (Zea mays l.) traits, using generation mean analysis method.

The choice of selection and breeding procedures for genetic improvement of maize or any other crop largely depends on the type and relative amount of genetic components and presence of non-allelic interaction. In this study, by using generation mean analysis method, six generations (P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2) from cross of corn, KE72012 (P1) ×K1263/1(P2) was evaluated for several agronomic traits including yield and its components. The results showed significant differences among generations for all traits. Most of the additive, dominance, additive ×additive, additive ×dominance and dominance ×dominance effects were significant indicating the importance of the additive, dominance and epistatic modes of gene action in controlling the agronomic characters in maize. However, dominance variance was more important than additive variance for most of the traits such as ear length, kernel number per row, kernel number per ear and grain yield, which justifies the production of hybrid varieties in maize. Broad sense heritability of traits were 0.290.87.The estimated number of genes for grain yield in the early maturing hybrid, KSC400 (KE72012 ×K1263/1), ranged from 3 to 10.