Yield Components and Diversity of Qualitative Characters of Fifty Accessions of Inbred Maize Lines

Abstract

Challenges in maize production in Indonesia have led to the importance of assembling high yield varieties of maize. To create superior maize varieties requires genetic material particularly inbred lines as the basic material for setting population to perform crossing and selection. The research aims to characterize the quantitative and qualitative characters of 50 inbred maize which contributed to high yield and also to determine the uniformity of the tested inbred lines. A randomized group design with 3 replications was performed. Based on the results, characters with the highest variance were the number of seeds per ear and 1000 bulk weight. There were five characters with high heritability, including ear diameter, number of seeds per ear, ear wet weight, ear dry weight, and dry seed weight. The highest heritability was obtained from dry seed weight, while the lowest heritability was the number of lines per ear. The accession with the highest dry seed weight was P4G19(S)C2-114-3-1-2 (70 g), accession with the largest ear diameter and the highest number of seeds per ear was P4G19(S)C2-15-1-1-4, and the one with the largest ear dry weight was P4G18(S)C2-18-1-1. The results of the analysis on qualitative characters showed that the variation was still high within the tested lines.