Genetic parameters estimatives in CMS-42 and CMS-43 popcorn populations

Abstract

The popcorn maize populations CMS-42 and CMS-43 were undergone to the second selection cycle among and within half-sib families. The objectives were to increase the favorable allele frequencies and to estimate the genetics and phenotypics parameters from some agronomic traits. It was used an 14 x 14 simple lattice field design with 196 treatments. The former selection cycles were used as intercalar check. Plots consisted of one 5 m row with a plant density of 50,000 pl/ha. Although more importance was given to popping expansion, the mean values from the selected families showed the possibility to obtain high productivity with these populations. CMS-43 showed greater variability than CMS-42 as could be seen by the greater additive genetic variance component in CMS-43 than in CMS-42. The mean values for popping capacity were 14.62%, 15.21% and 19.65% for the checks, families and selected progenies, respectively with the population CMS-42, and 16.07%, 16.85% and 22.31%, respectively, for CMS-43. For both populations, the narrow sense heritability for popping expansion was 60% and the estimated gain with selection among families was 16.80% for CMS-42 and 19.12% for CMS-43.