Comparative studies between two selection methods for improvement of yellow maize population yield [electronic resource].

Includes references.

Recurrent selection is the most common mean for indirectly enhancing inbred lines performance by enhancing the performance of their sources of populations. We compared the effectiveness of two intrapopulation selection methods of s1 progeny and half-sib progeny via Design I mating scheme in improving the yield of Nubaria yellow maize population (NYP) (Co). For fairer comparison, we unified germplasm used in the two methods by using s1 seeds supposed to be kept for recombination in half-sib family selection as a germplasm of s1 family selection. This permitted studying the outbred and inbred progeny for the same parent providing the prospect for combined selection on which selection unit is the parent family (both half- sib and s1 families for the same parent). In recombination season, at harvest, s1 topcrosses of each improved population were separated to examine the general combining ability of each recombined s1. The three resulting improved populations via their respective s1 topcrosses were under evaluation with the original and the check populations. Significant differences were detected among s1 topcrosses for grain yield trait. Actual gain for grain yield (3.9 and 3.7 ard/fad for s1 and H.S. family selection methods, respectively) were apparently one-half the predicted gain. Grain yield has improved significantly through this cycle with an increase up to 32 % than the original population. The improved population by combined selection was the highest yielding followed by the improved by s1 family selection then the improved by half-sib family selection with non significant differences among the three improved populations. We recommend with using the improved population resulting from the combined selection as a sub-population and combining the three improved populations seeds without those of s1 topcrosse$ with low-performance in one population used for isolation and as a material for the coming improving cycles of recurrent selection.

Summary in Arabic.

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