Association of performance between S3 families and topcross hybrids of popcorn

Abstract

Topcross is used in maize improvement mainly to foresee the behavior of inbred families in crossing, discarding those of inferior performance. This is made because the behavior of performance of inbred families is not a good predictor of its behavior in crossing. This fact is evidenced by several works where low correlations between performances had been found among inbred families and in crossing, for some characters. However, concerning the expansion volume, works of correlation between performance to families and in crossings were not found. Therefore, the objective of this work was to analyze the association of performance between S₃ families of the population of Beija-Flor popcorn and its respective hybrids topcross, considering yield and expansion volume. It was used a population of Viçosa popcorn as bequeather. The correlations between S₃ families and its hybrids was low. They varied from 0.09 to 0.17 for yield and from 0.34 to 0.58 for expansion volume. Ambient differences must have been the main causes for the low correlations. However, not additive genetic factors also must have been of high importance. The high correlations found for expansion volume in relation to the ones found for yield was cause, mainly, by the fact that expansion volume be a character less influenced by the environment and not by additive factors.