Journal of Environmental Biology

Field corn, an alternate option in sweet corn improvement: Generation Mean Analysis and Heterosis

O.K. Devadharssini¹, A. Subramanian¹*, R. Ravikesavan¹, N. Senthil², K. Gurusamy³ M. Djanaguiraman⁴ and

N. Kumari Vinodhana¹     

¹Centre for Plant Breeding and Genetics, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, India

²Centre for Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore- 641 003, India

³Department of Food Process Engineering, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore-641 003, India

⁴Department of Crop Physiology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore- 641 003, India

Received: 13 September 2024                   Revised: 16 November 2024                   Accepted: 07 April 2025

*Corresponding Author Email : subramanian.a@tnau.ac.in                     *ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7992-1384                     

Abstract

Aim: To determine a suitable breeding method to improve sweetcorn in terms of morpho-agronomic traits using field corn along with the insights from gene action information tapped from generation mean analysis and heterosis analysis to understand the interaction of sweetcorn and field corn as well.

Methodology: The mean performance of six generations namely, P₁, P₂, F₁, F₂, B₁ and B₂ were employed to find the gene action information. The mean values of F1 and F2 were used to calculate heterobeltiosis, inbreeding depression and potence ratio.

Results: The results revealed the presence of additive, dominance and epistatic gene action in different magnitudes for different crosses and traits. Except for TSS, the majority of F1s exhibited heterosis in cob and plant traits.

Interpretation: A generation of population improvement followed by heterosis breeding using field corn is recommended. However, for improving TSS, field corn cannot be used instead another sweetcorn inbred should be employed.

Key words: Gene action, GMA, Heterosis, Inbreeding depression, Sweetcorn

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