PJB-2021-700
ASSESSMENT OF ASSOCIATION AND GENETIC DIVERSITY AMONG DIFFERENT INDICATORS LINKED TO GRAIN ZINC CONTENT AND YIELD IN MAIZE GENOTYPES INDIGENOUS TO PAKISTAN
Shaham Hamayoun Khan
Abstract
Globally, zinc deficiency prevails in one third population of the world, mainly this is due to consumption of cereals grown on zinc deficient soils. Different interventions to mitigate malnutrition include school feeding, nutrition education, food fortification, diet diversification, supplementation, nutraceuticals and bio-fortification. Bio-fortification is an agricultural intervention suitable for farmers and consumers due to accessibility and cost effectiveness. Maize (Zea mays L.), being short duration, high yielding and having two growing seasons per annum is most suitable cereal for bio-fortification in Pakistan. In this study, total 150 indigenous maize inbred lines were studied to investigate grain zinc contents, yield and yield contributing traits following augmented field design, PCA and correlation coefficients. Significant genotypic diversity was observed for genotype (adj. and unadj.), augmented entries, checks, check vs augmented and checks + check vs augmented for studied traits. Blocking (adj.) was found non-significantly different for studied traits except ASI, indicating homogeneity within blocks. First four components of overall PCA depicted eigen value more than one and were considered as such. These components explained 73.5 % (PC-1= 28.4%, PC-2= 22.7%, PC-3 = 12.6% and PC4 = 9.8%) variability, while PCA for grain zinc contents and average yield per plant revealed 100 % (PC-1= 65.9 %, PC-2= 34.1 %) of total variability. Among inbred lines, E102, E38, E92, E52, E91, E1, E93, E54, E28, E25, E72, E30 and E90 showed high grain zinc contents and average grain yield per plant in PCA based study. The grain zinc contents were less than the desired contents (33mg kg-1) notified by HarvestPlus. To achieve desired level of grain zinc contents and yield, screening of germplasm for selection of parents to be used in breeding is suggested. Other suggested options were to create variability by hybridization and exploitation of heterotic potential. Correlation studies revealed significant positive correlation of average grain yield per plant with ear length, number of grains per row, number of rows per cob and 1000 grain weight. Selection of inbred lines based on standards positively associated with grain yield per plant leads to improvement of yield. Grain zinc contents was significantly and positive correlated with average grain yield per plant.
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