Heterosis for oil content in maize populations and hybrids of high quality protein
Jaison Pereira de Oliveira, Lázaro José Chaves, João Batista Duarte, Keyla de Oliveira Ribeiro, and Edward Madureira Brasil
This study aimed to evaluate QPM populations and their crosses for grain oil content to determine the heterosis and its components. Ninety-six hybrids and their 21 parents were analyzed and separated in the groups dent and flint, in the partial diallelic/diallel intergroup scheme. The oil content was extracted from dry matter by the Soxhlet method in three replicates for each genotypic material and attained mean values of 5.04g 100g-1 and 4.78g 100g-1, respectively, in the groups dent and flint. Among the hybrid crosses, CMS 456 x CMS 463 (6.84g 100g-1) presented the highest value. Although the average heterosis (-9.83%) indicates average dominance of the alleles for low oil content, combinations with positive total heterosis were observed. In this sense, the best populations under the focus of improvement for high oil content were ZQP101 and ZQP103, both of the dent group, and CMS52, BR473, CMS455c and CMS465 of the flint group. Hence, it was concluded that there is genetic variability and significant heterosis in the genotypes under study.