Department of Employment Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI), Hermitage Research Facility, Warwick, Qld 4370, Australia; Department of Animal Science, North West University, Private Bag X2046, Mafikeng, South Africa
Solomon, K.F., Department of Employment Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI), Hermitage Research Facility, Warwick, Qld 4370, Australia; Zeppa, A., Department of Employment Economic Development and Innovation (DEEDI), Hermitage Research Facility, Warwick, Qld 4370, Australia; Mulugeta, S.D., Department of Animal Science, North West University, Private Bag X2046, Mafikeng, South Africa
The objectives of this study were to evaluate the importance of heterosis for agronomic and quality traits in shrunken (sh2) sweet corn, assess the usefulness of combining ability to predict the value of parents and their crosses for further genetic improvement and examine whether genetic divergence can predict heterosis or F 1 performance. Ten genetically diverse shrunken (sh2) sweet corn inbred lines were used to generate 45 F 1s. F 1s and parents were evaluated for agronomic and quality traits across environments. Heterosis was more important for yield-related traits than it was for ear aspects and eating quality. Heterosis for most traits was mostly dependent on dominance genetic effects of parental lines. Parents and F 1per se performance were highly correlated with general combining ability effects and mid-parent values, respectively, for most traits. Hybrid performance for flavour and plant height was significantly but weakly related to simple sequence repeat (SSR)-based genetic distance (GD). Phenotypic distance (PD), estimated from phenotypic traits was correlated with heterosis for total soluble solids, ear length and flavour. © 2012 State of Queensland.