Drought and poor soil fertility are among the major abiotic stresses affecting maize productivity in sub-Saharan Africa. Maize breeding efforts at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) have focused on incorporating drought stress tolerance and nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) into tropical maize germplasm. The objectives of this study were to estimate the general combining ...

maize improvement for high temperature tolerance requires the reliable assessment of parental inbred lines and their combinations. fifteen maize inbred lines were evaluated during 2007 and 2008 in shushtar city (khuzestan province). the inbred lines were planted at two dates: 6 july, to coincide heat stress with pollination time; and 27 july, as normal planting to avoid high temperature during ...

Percentage survivorship, developmental time, adult body length, and sex ratio of Plodia interpunctella (Hübner) reared on field-produced grain from sixteen cultivars of maize, Zea mays L., including several transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) Berliner hybrids and selected non-Bt isolines, were evaluated under laboratory conditions. Compared with isolines, development was delayed and survivor...

Drought-tolerant maize hybrids currently are being marketed by several seed suppliers. Such hybrids were developed by phenotypic and marker-assisted selection or through genetic modification and tested by exposing these hybrids to various degrees of water restriction. As drought intensifies, crop yields and survival progressively decline. Water need differs among plants due to differences in ro...

Heterosis plays an important role in achieving improvement in crop production. About 69 F 1 hybrids obtained by crossing twenty three lines and three testers in a line × tester fashion were used to derive the information on degree of heterosis over mid, better and standard parent in maize. Sixty nine crosses and their parents including one check CoH(M)5 were evaluated in a Randomized Block Desi...

Predicting the grain yield performance of three-way hybrids is challenging. Three-way crosses are relevant for hybrid breeding in barley ( L.) and maize ( L.) adapted to East Africa. The main goal of our study was to implement and evaluate genome-wide prediction approaches of the performance of three-way hybrids using data of single-cross hybrids for a scenario in which parental lines of the th...

Maize is one of the most widely cultivated crops. It accumulates a large quantity of seed storage proteins, which are important for seed development and germination, and contribute to the nutritional quality of seeds. Based on solubility, the storage proteins are divided into albumins (water-soluble), globulins (salt-soluble), prolamins (alcohol-soluble), and glutelins (acid- or alkali-soluble)...

The major component of complex genomes is repetitive elements, which remain recalcitrant to characterization. Using maize as a model system, we analyzed whole genome shotgun (WGS) sequences for the two maize inbred lines B73 and Mo17 using k-mer analysis to quantify the differences between the two genomes. Significant differences were identified in highly repetitive sequences, including centrom...

The western corn rootworm, Diabrotica virgifera virgifera (LeConte), is a major pest of maize, Zea mays L., in the United States and Europe, and it is likely to increase in importance as a trend toward increased nonrotated maize favors larger rootworm populations. Options for rootworm management in nonrotated maize in Europe and in nontransgenic "refuge" areas in countries that permit transgeni...