Genetic Studies On The Main Traits Of Popcorn

13 Maize inbred lines was used selectively as parents to make incomplete diallel crossing in order to made 42 combinations and study the heterosis,the general combining ability(GCA),the specific combining ability(SCA),the total combining ability,and heritability of 12 characters including yield,popping rate,expansion volume,plant height,ear height,ear length,ear width,ear row number and 100-grain weight,grain number per row,stem diameter and also calculated the path coefficient with the yield.The main results are as followed:1.The heterosis of each character was ubiquitous in the 42 hybridized combinations, the dominance had big discrepancy between treatments,in despite of mid-parent heterosis or over-parent heterosis,the positivity was more than negativity,and the heterosis of mid-parent and over-parent was bigger in the characters below: N02×Nll,N07×N12,N02×N12,N07×N10,N06×N08,N07×N08,N06×N10, N02×N13,N02×N12,N01×N08,N07×N09,N02×N08 etc..Seeing from the average avlue of the hereosts index,the yield was the strongest,and grain number per row, plant height,ear weight,and 100-grain weight are followed.2.The combination of higher parents'general combining ability contains N02,N08,N10 and N12 which not just have higher yield general combining ability but all the other characters were comparatively high positive.It indicated that these 4 mothers can be used as good parent for cross breeding of popcorn.3.The specific combining ability was different according to the hybridized combinations with different parents,and the specific combining ability of different combinations with same parents have discrepancies too,which showed there are different non-additive effect caused by different genetic background according to different combination with same parents inbred lines or big different parents inbred lines.In these 42 combinations,N05×N09,N03×N10,N03×N08,N01×N11 have the comparatively higher specific combining ability.4.The result of total combining ability analysis for the 42 combinations showed N02xN11(31.942) had the highest yield total combining ability,N04×N13(25.374) followed;N01×N11(25.176) had the highest expansion volume total combining ability,each types of combining ability with F1 yield correlation coefficient all reached significant level,combining ability especially total combining ability can be one of the effective index in terms of judge parents and hybridize combination.5.The study of yield and trait broad heritability and narrow heritability indicated that,ear height,stem diameter,rare ear length all have lower broad heritability and narrow heritability.And it was influenced by circumstance greatly.Ear width, 100-grain weight,ear row number and yield,these 5 characters had comparatively higher broad heritability and narrow heritability,and the discrepancy was small,and the additive effect was bigger than non-additive effect,but can be choose in the early generation.The broad heritability was high while narrow heritability was lower in terms of Plant height,ear length,popping rate,expansion volume,it was mainly because of the control of non-additive effect,and easy to be influenced by the environment.6.Analysis of correlation of yield and the main characters study showed,each characters VS yield genetic correlation coefficient size down as:ear width, 100-grain weight,plant height,ear row number,ear length,grain number per row, ear height,stem diameter,rare ear length,expansion volume,popping rate.All of them had different level of positive correlation expect rare ear length,expansion volume,popping rate and yield are negative correlation.And plant height,ear width, ear length,grain number per row,100-gain weight compare to yield related traits all achieved significant level.7.The direct path coefficients of those characters to yield were(From big to small): ear width,ear length,100-grain weight,plant height,expansion multiple,stem diameter,ear row number,ear height,popping rate,rare ear length,grain number per row.We should first choose the parents that have good manifestations on ear width, ear length,100-grain weight.8.Through the analysis on general combining ability,specific combining ability, total combining ability,F₁ generation yield,we got the conclusion that N02×N11, N04×N13,N05×N09,N02×N08 and N05×N08 had shown certain advantage in the 42 hybrid.So they are excellent combinations.