Vol. 10, Issue 12 (2021)

Author(s):
D Chouhan, RB Dubey, P Choudhary and D Singh

Abstract:
The present study was conducted to estimate heterosis and combining ability effects in sweet corn (Zea mays L. Ssp. saccharata) hybrids and to screen out hybrids having high green cob and fodder yield and high TSS content. About 66 genotypes comprising of 45 sweet corn hybrids, 18 parental lines and 3 standard checks (Priya, Madhuri and Sugar-75) were evaluated in RBD in three different environments (E₁ at Instructional Farm, RCA, Udaipur during Kharif-2019, E₂ at ARS, Banswara during Kharif-2019 and E₃ at Instructional Farm, RCA, Udaipur during Rabi-2019-20) in RBD with three replications for twenty diverse traits.Maximum and positively significant heterosis over the best check was shown by the sweet corn hybrid L₇ x T₁ (73.68%) for green cob weight/ plant. Highest and positively perceptible economic heterosis for green fodder yield (kg/ ha) and TSS content of green grain was observed for the sweet corn hybrids L₄ x T₂ (86.24%) and L₁₁ x T₁ (17.89%) respectively. On the basis of specific combining ability effects, among the selected best five hybrids, sweet corn hybrids L₅ x T₂ and L₆ x T₃ were best for green cob yield, green fodder yield and green cob weight plant^-1 while the hybrid L₁₀ x T₁ was best for green cob yield, green cob weight plant^-1 and TSS content of green grain. Combining ability analysis for green cob yield and green cob weight/ plant revealed that lines L₂, L₃, L₇, L₈, L₁₁, L₁₂ and L₁₃ were good general combiners over the three environments. Sweet corn hybrid L₅ x T₂ was identified to exhibit highest and positively significant specific combining ability effect for green cob yield (4090.05) over the three environments.