Heterosis for oil content in maize populations andhybrids of high quality protein

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate QPM populations and their crosses for grain oil content to determine theheterosis and its components. Ninety-six hybrids and their 21 parents were analyzed and separated in the groups dent andflint, in the partial diallelic/diallel intergroup scheme. The oil content was extracted from dry matter by the Soxhlet method inthree replicates for each genotypic material and attained mean values of 5.04g 100g-1 and 4.78g 100g-1, respectively, in thegroups dent and flint. Among the hybrid crosses, CMS 456 x CMS 463 (6.84g 100g-1) presented the highest value. Althoughthe average heterosis (-9.83%) indicates average dominance of the alleles for low oil content, combinations with positive totalheterosis were observed. In this sense, the best populations under the focus of improvement for high oil content were ZQP101and ZQP103, both of the dent group, and CMS52, BR473, CMS455c and CMS465 of the flint group. Hence, it was concludedthat there is genetic variability and significant heterosis in the genotypes under study.

Keywords

• QPM
• maize
• nutritional quality
• diallel.