Agromorphological Characterization of Maize Hybrids and Estimation of Genetic Parameters in Mid-Hills of Far-West Nepal

Abstract

The experiment was laid out in alpha-lattice design with two replicates of each genotype which comprised twenty-three heat-tolerant maize hybrids received from CIMMYT-Mexico and three check varieties. These treatment genotypes were evaluated at the Agronomy farm, Gokuleshwor College, Baitadi, Nepal, during the spring season of 2021. ZH191065 and ZH191158 were found to be the tallest (307.2 cm) and the shortest (227.6 cm) genotypes, respectively. High heritability (>60%) with high genetic advances in most traits, ensures the predominance difference of the genetic components observed among accessions. The presence of differences among genotypes showed that selection is possible by evaluating the days of 50% anthesis, days of 50% silking, anthesis-silking interval, number of ears per plant, number of grains per row, number of rows per cob, cob length, cob diameter, and grain yield; most of these evaluated morphological traits were found highly correlated with grain yield of varieties, suggesting that indirect selection achieves improvement for high yield. Based on yield ranks, ZH 19782, ZH 19961, and DKC 9108 could be promoted as potential higher-yielding heat-tolerant maize hybrids for Nepal.