COMBINING ABILITY FOR GRAIN YIELD AND ITS COMPONENT TRAITS IN MAIZE (Zea mays L.)

Testing of inbred lines for general combining ability (gca) enables plant breeders to discard undesirable ones and identify those that are desirable for the production of superior hybrids.In this context, 16 inbred lines were selected on the basis of grain yield and were evaluated for their gca related to grain yield plant -1 and its attributing traits.The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the inbred lines for their per se performance as well as their gca.Similarly the hybrids differed significantly for per se performance and their specific combining ability (SCA) effects for all the traits.Five of the 16 inbred lines were identified as good general combiners for grain yield plant -1 .Non-significant correlation between per se performance and gca effects suggested that per se performance of inbred lines is not a good indicator of their gca effects for any of the traits.However, significant positive and fairly high magnitude of correlation between per se performance of hybrids and sum of parental gca effects indicated good predictability of hybrids per se performance based on their parental gca effects for all the traits investigated.