Combining, Earliness, Short Anthesis To Silking Interval And Yield Based Selection Indices Under Intermittent Water Stress To Select For Drought Tolerant Maize
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Date
2013Author
Ngugi, Kahiu
Juma, Ogeto Collins
Muchira, Sicily
Language
enMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Maize
,
the most important staple crop in Kenya
,
is affected by drought stress at flowering period leading to low
yields. Past
studies
at CIMMYT have demonstrated that a short Anthesis to Silking Interval (ASI) is an important component of drought tolerance in
maize. In this study, one hundred and thirty five F
2
;F
3
progenies developed from
crosses between long ASI, Ka
tumani composites
and short ASI, elite CIMMYT genotypes were evaluated
for grain yield
under drought stressed and well
-
watered environments, in
two seasons in an alpha lattice design of three replications.
ASI was significantly negatively correlated with g
rain yield (GY) under
stress (
-
0.446) but not under well watered condition. ASI was significantly positively correlated with stress susceptible index (SSI)
(0.304) but was highly negatively significantly correlated with stress tolerance index (STI) (
-
0.378
). ASI was also significantly
positively correlated with geometric mean productivity (GMP) (
-
0.448), mean productivity (MP) (
-
0.419), and yield stress index
(YSI) (
-
0.303). Among the computed drought tolerance selection indices, GMP and GY were highly posi
tively
correlated with other
drought selection indices and negatively correlated with ASI. These two traits are likely to be better measures of drought t
olerance
than all the other indices.
F
3
families from KDV2/CML444
-
14 and KDV2/CML440
-
224 generations
were earlier maturing, higher
yielding, a shorter ASI and higher WUE and GMP indices than the other genotypes, under drought stressed environments.
It is possible to combine
earliness and ASI
in developing high yielding, early maturing drought tolerant m
aize for arid and semi
-
arid
areas of Kenya.
Citation
Ngugi, K., Collins, J. O., & Muchira, S. (2013). Combining, earliness, short anthesis to silking interval and yield based selection indices under intermittent water stress to select for drought tolerant maize. Australian Journal of Crop Science, 7(13), 2014.Publisher
University of Nairobi