Study of combining ability of new self-pollinated lines of maize in Central Part of Krasnodar Krai
It's common knowledge that any success of breeding work largely depends on initial material. The staff of Krasnodar RIA named after P.P. Lukiyanenko is carrying out a significant work in breeding, assessment and classification of new initial material for breeding of maize hybrids with high heterosis. Assessing self-pollinated lines as initial material, it's necessary to analyze their combining ability according to grain productivity. Thus, the article gives the results of three year experiments in the field of heterosis breeding of maize. These are determined the general (GCA) and specific (SCA) combining abilities of new initial material. Variability of weather conditions during the years of experiments allowed finding really important geno types, which are valuable in maize hybrids breeding. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) of the received data showed some true geno type differences among hybrids of top-crossing scheme according to grain productivity for three years (Ffactor>Ftheory). At the same time we determined a significant variability of initial parent components influenced by the general and specific combining abilities. On the basis of the assessment of combining ability of self-pollinated lines we selected geno types with a high and permanent assessment of GCA and effects of SCA, which allowed identifying further ways of use of studied lines. More careful analysis of the received data gave us an opportunity to select lines with high effects of GCA and variances of SCA simultaneously. In general, we can talk about a right choice of the position of parent components in the formulas of the most promising test-crossings that produced high effects of heterosis on trait 'grain productivity'.