Performance Evaluation and Identification of Highland Quality Protein Maize Hybrids in Ethiopia

Background: Maize plays an indispensable role in meeting high food demand. It is globally one of the most widely adopted and cultivated crops. Hybrid development from fixed inbred lines is one of the strategies for the improvement of maize production. The national average maize yield is low in East Africa; thus, the selection of promising germplasm has a great role to meet the high food demand of growing the population. Forty-two Quality Protein Maize (QPM) crosses (21 inbred lines each crossed with two testers) along with three popular standard hybrids checks were evaluated in two replications using alpha lattice during the 2017 cropping season at Ambo, Arsi-Negele, and Kulumsa. The objective of this study was to evaluate and select the best new QPM hybrids for grain yield, and other agronomic and morphological characteristics.

Results: Significant difference among crosses was observed for 19 traits at Ambo, 14 traits at Arsi-Negele, and 19 traits at Kulumsa. Out of 28 traits studied, six of them did not show genotype by location interaction but they showed a significant genotypic effect. These traits were: Days to Silking (DS), Number of Ears per plant (EPP), Ear Length (EL), Kernels Per Row (KPR), Ear Diameter (ED), and Thousand Seed Weight (TSW). Based on the mean performance in the combined analysis, from 42 new QPM crosse, six of them (L8xT2, L7xT1, L8xT1, L19xT1, L6xT2, and L18xT1) were scored higher grain yield compared with the mean of the three standard checks and best conventional maize (CM) check (AMH853). L8xT2, L7xT1, L8xT1 crosses showed a higher grain yield advantage over the best check (AMH853) by 20.87, 14.13, and 13.63%, respectively.

Conclusion: The study implicated the existence of a difference between the newly developed hybrids and the standard check varieties. In general, the study enabled us to identify promising crosses that could be forwarded for further use in maize breeding programs in future work.