Performance of Crosses among French and Spanish Maize Populations across Environments

Abstract

teristics such as early vigor, earliness, resistance to stem lodging, and relative resistance to drought stress. In Heterotic patterns among European maize (Zea mays L.) populaaddition, flint kernels possess a better potential than tions are strongly affected by genotype ϫ environment (GE) interacother kernels for developing high quality flours. Theretions and no single heterotic pattern has been identified so far that is not influenced by GE interaction. The objectives of this work fore, the high quality flour producers flint ϫ flint maize were to study (i) the mean performance and stability of the heterotic hybrids could be a good alternative to the most common patterns 'Humid Spain ϫ Southern France' and 'Dry Spain ϫ Humid hybrids used in Europe, European flint ϫ American Spain' and (ii) the influence of some environmental and genotypic dent, mostly in regions where earliness is required. covariates on G and E main effects and their interaction. We studied Heterotic patterns have been found among maize the GE interaction for grain yield in eight environments using Sites germplasms from different European countries (Mise-Regression (SREG) and factorial regression models. The biplot obvic, 1989; Ordá s, 1991; Radovic and Jelovac, 1995; tained from the SREG model allowed visual cultivar evaluation. The Revilla et al., 2002). A diallel among six French and six factorial regression model incorporated genotypic and environmen-Spanish local populations was evaluated at four locatal covariates that enhanced biological interpretation of GE interactions and 2 yr and analyzed following the Analysis II of tion. The heterotic patterns Humid Spain ϫ Southern France and Dry Spain ϫ Humid Spain had similar mean performance across environ-Gardner and Eberhart (1966) (unpublished). Different ments, but the former, represented by the cross Lazcano ϫ Millette heterotic patterns were obtained for each location, aldu Lauragais, was more stable. Effects of G, E, and GE for grain though they could be grouped in two main heterotic yield were mainly due to earliness, vigor effects, and/or environmental patterns, Humid Spain ϫ Dry Spain and Humid Spain ϫ factors related to cold stress. An adequately long vegetative cycle Southern France. Additionally, the year ϫ population along with early vigor had a great influence on the mean grain yield interaction was significant for grain yield and clearly performance of Lazcano ϫ Millette du Lauragais. Additionally, its affected the ranking of populations (unpublished data). intermediate number of days to silking and tolerance to temperatureHeterotic patterns among European maize populations stresses could be related to its stability. Breeding for tolerance to are strongly affected by GE interactions and no single temperature stresses could render more stable maize genotypes.

Agronomic and molecular evaluation of maize inbred lines for drought tolerance

“…In another study, the tion and grain-setting (Aylor, 2003). Similar results in other studies confirmed maximum daily temperatures (Malvar et al, 2005;Vargas et al, 2006) and average air humidity (Butron et al, 2004) to be important environmental factors that explain GEI component of grain yield.…”

Agronomic performance of sweetcorn populations derived from crosses between sweetcorn and field corn

“…Oroso is also the best potential donor of favourable alleles for sweetcorn survival under cold conditions . Another promising field corn population for improving the adaptation of sweetcorn to northern Spain is Lazcano; out of 12 flint corn populations it achieved the best yields across different locations in Spain and France (Malvar et al, 2005).…”

“…Lazcano performs well on both the northern Spanish coast and in the interior (Malvar et al, 2005). However, Rastrojero is well adapted to the conditions of Spain's interior and could be a promising source of adaptation traits for sweetcorn in this region; it could also help to improve sweetcorn resistance to corn borers (Malvar et al, 1993(Malvar et al, , 2004.…”

Comparison of biplot analysis and Kang's YSi statistic in estimating maize hybrids stability

“…According to Yan et al (2001) ideal genotypes should have large projections of their markers towards the ASC abscissa to show high performance and small, preferably zero projection onto the ASC ordinate to show high stability of performance. Plant breeders and agronomists have found SREG biplot analysis to be useful for genotype evaluation (Butron et al 2004, Malvar et al 2005, Preciado-Ortiz et al 2006, Fan et al 2007.…”