Heterosis for ear parameters, crop duration and prolificacy in varietal crosses of maize (Zea mays L.)

Abstract

During evaluation of jhum maize landraces from Tripura [1], it was argued that they were similar to Sikkim primitive type as revealed from the descriptions made earlier by Sachan and Sarkar [2]. Tribal communities of Tripura generally consume the small cobs of these prolific varieties as vegetables. With the increasing market demand of baby corn and sweet corn in India, they might have some commercial prospects in near future. But in the course of competition with the new world maize varieties, they are gradually becoming endangered due to their long duration, small cob size and low yielding ability. One of the approaches of their improvement in respect of these characters is to develop inter-varietal hybrids. Beal [3] was the first to report the inter-varietal hybrid in maize and with the understanding of the theoretical background of recurrent selection, this approach is becoming more popular. Present investigation was aimed at analyzing the heterotic responses of inter-varietal crosses.