Eight advanced inbred lines derived from different yellow maize populations were crossed in a half diallel mating scheme in 2010 season at Gemmeiza Agric. Res. Station. The resultant 28 crosses along with two commercial check hybrids i.e. SC 166 and SC 173 were evaluated at two locations i.e. Gemmeiza and Mallawy Agric. Res. Stations in 2011 season. Mean squares due to crosses, G.C.A. and S.C.A. were highly significant for all studied traits. The ratio of Ʃg2i/ ƩS2ij indicated that the nonadditive gene effects played the major role in the inhertance of all the studied traits. For grain yield, one parental inbred line P3 had significant positive GCA effects and six crosses P1xP2, P1xP6, P2xP4, P3xP8, P5xP7 and P6xP7 had significant or highly significant positive SCA effects. One cross P3xP8 gave similar productivity to that of SC 166. Also two crosses P3xP5 and P5xP7 exhibited similar yield performance to that of the check hybrid SC 173, since no significant difference. These promising crosses may be released as commercial hybrids by maize research program after further testing. Keywords: maize, diallel crosses, gene effect. INTRODUCTION: Diallel crosses in maize was developed by Sprague and Tatum (1942) who partitioned the variation among F 1 crosses resulting from inbred lines to general (G.C.A.) and specific (S.C.A.) combining ability. Matzinger et al. (1959) revealed that the G.C.A. variance is a function of additive variance, while S.C.A. variance is a function of the non-additive variance. Griffing (1956) gave a complete analysis of diallel crosses for fixed and random set of parents. El-Shamarka (1995), Mostafa et al. (1996), Abd El-Aty and Katta (2002) and Ibrahim et al. (2010) reported that specific combining ability effects were much more important in the inheritance of grain yield and its components.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.