“…Griffing's methods have become popular among plant breeders to determine GCA and SCA effects in maize Kang et al, 1999Kang et al, , 2005Phumichai et al, 2008;Yao et al, 2013) and other crops (Ragsdale and Smith, 2007;Zwart et al, 2008;Yang and Gai, 2009;Velu et al, 2011;Berger et al, 2012). The GCA and SCA effects have been further used for genetic diversity evaluation, inbred line selection, heterotic pattern classification, heterosis estimation, and hybrid development (Sughroue and Hallauer, 1997;Fan et al, 2002;Melani and Carena, 2005;Barata and Carena, 2006).…”