The initial material for breeding of drought tolerant hybrids of maize

The most important task for maize breeding in the Russian Federation is breeding on drought tolerance. The location of All-Russian Research Institute of Grain Crops (ARRIGC) in the area of unstable humidity gives an opportunity to select some water stress tolerant genotypes in the conditions of natural drought. Forty-two new lines of maize, some introduced middle-early and middle maturing self-pollinated lines of maize and eight simple hybrids as testers have been studied for drought tolerance. There have been identified middle-early lines DS 257/85-1, КУ 334, DS 498/217-1 and DS 257/85-3 with low values of residual water deficit (RWD) in the flowering stage (7.0-11.3%) and its slight increase (0.6-2.1%) during drought increase in a milk wax maturity phase. The middle-early new line DS 257/85-4 showed a negative dynamics of RWD, the value decrease of the index during the vegetation was 2.2%. There have been obtained middle maturing self-pollinated lines DK 257/85-5, DS 498/203, DS 498/217-3, КУ 262, DS 217/498 with high ability to adapt to water stress. They are characterized with low values of residual water deficit in the flowering stage (8.9-9.4%) and low values of RWD in the milk wax maturity phase (9.4-11.7%). The negative selection has been carried out that allowed to reject lines S 207, S 232, DS 768/85, SP 246/276 and the lines of the world collection RG 213, TVA-173, DK 64/123 which did not possess drought tolerance. All studied testers were characterized with water stress tolerance, while the testers ‘Krucha M’, ‘Karolina M’, ‘Kr 640 UM’ showed the best values of RWD, with 8.9-9.3% in the flowering stage and 9.3-12.3% in the milk wax maturity phase. The obtained self-pollinated lines and testers are going to be used in the programs of hybridization to breed middle-early and middle maturing drought tolerant hybrids of maize.

self-pollinated lines, hybrids, testers, drought tolerance (resistance), residual water deficit, positive selection, negative selection

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