Heritability, heterosis and heterobeltiosis studies for morphological traits of maize (Zea mays L.) seedlings

Background: Maize is one of most important cereal crop in world after wheat and rice. It is grown in Pakistan as a major cash crop cultivation in the area of 1083 thousand hectares producing 3990 thousand tones. Maize is dual propose crop it is used as feed for livestock and food for human. It is also used as a raw material in textile, food and medicine industries. The present study was conducted to evaluate parents and F1 hybrids of maize for seedling traits including heritability, heterosis and heterobelteiosis.Methodology: The genetic material was comprises of twelve parents and including their 36 F1 hybrids. The parents and F1 hybrids were sown in the iron treys filled with sand in three replications following completely randomized design. The data was recorded for fresh root length, fresh shoot length, fresh root-to-shoot length ratio, fresh root weight, fresh shoot weight and fresh root-to-shoot weight ratio. The data was subjected for analysis genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variance. The genetic advance was calculated by using Falconer (1989) formula.Results: The average batter performance was given by B-336, EV-347, EV-1097Q and B-327. The F1 hybrids, EV-1097Q × EV-347, EV-1097Q × EV-340, Raka-poshi × EV-347, B-327 × B-316 and Sh-139 × EV-347 showed higher values of heterosis and heterobeltiosis for respected studied traits of maize seedlings.Conclusion: In this study, it is concluded that the F1 hybrids, EV-1097Q x EV-347, EV-1097Q x EV-340, Raka-poshi x EV-347, B-327 x B-316 and Sh-139 x EV-347 may be used as higher yield maize hybrids and parents EV-347, EV-1097Q, B-327 and B-316 may be used to develop higher yield maize hybrids following heterosis breeding scheme