Combining ability and heterosis for diastatic activity in grain sorghum

ABSTRACT Eighty-five sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) entries including 13 restorer-lines (lines), 5 maintainer-lines (testers), 65 F1 hybrids, and two controls, were grown at Muzarabani, Zimbabwe during the rainy seasons of 1986/87 and 1987/88 to study the combining ability and heterosis for diastatic activity. Grain samples were evaluated for diastatic activity, expressed in Sorghum Diastatic Units (SDU) per gram of malt, in 1989. Differences between sorghum lines, testers, hybrids, and total entries were significant for diastatic activity in both seasons. There were large differences in mean diastatic activity values and ranges for entries in both seasons. The mean SDU g^-1 malt for hybrids varied from 20.5 to 67.2 for the 1986/87 season and 13.3 to 48.9 for the 1987/88 season. Variation in diastatic activity was primarily due to non-additive gene action. The highest positive general combining ability effects were observed for the line 4HA85S, and tester 120A. Significant positive specific combining ability effects were observed for hybrid 120A x D 38073-2. This was the only cross which had positive high parent heterosis in both seasons, but it was only significant in the 1987/88 season. Most of the crosses had negative high parent heterosis. To improve diastatic activity, recurrent selection procedures for specific combining ability should be used to develop elite parents for hybrids

Vote buying or (political) business (cycles) as usual?

We study the short-run effect of elections on monetary aggregates in a sample of 85 low and middle income democracies (1975-2009). We find an increase in the growth rate of M1 during election months of about one tenth of a standard deviation. A similar effect can neither be detected in established OECD democracies nor in other months. The effect is larger in democracies with many poor and uneducated voters, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and in East-Asia and the Pacific. We argue that the election month monetary expansion is related to systemic vote buying which requires significant amounts of cash to be disbursed right before elections. The finely timed increase in M1 is consistent with this; is inconsistent with a monetary cycle aimed at creating an election time boom; and it cannot be, fully, accounted for by alternative explanations