By Sweta

Exclusive to TractorExport

Hybrid vigor or heterosis refers to increase in characteristics such as size, fertility, growth rate and yield of a hybrid organism over its parents. In practical breeding hybrid vigor has greatest success in maize. The combining ability of inbred lines is an essential feature of maize breeding programs. When appropriate lines in single, double and other crosses are combined a hybrid is obtained.

A project related to maize breeding for “generating and validating maize varieties that are drought tolerant and to reduce and stabilize mycotoxin damage which occurs due to changes in climate” was started by FONTAGRO in 2009-2013. FONTAGRO is an alliance of Latin American and Caribbean countries that supports research and innovation in agriculture.

This project has generated 5000 Double Haploid lines that are presently under evaluation in CIMMYT (Mexico). These lines were generated after selecting inbred lines with characteristics like drought tolerance, less mycotoxin accumulation and resistance to ear rot disease which is commonly found in maize crops of South America. Inbred lines with high resistance to ear rot disease and high tolerance to mycotoxin accumulation were also identified through the project. This project also revealed that fumonisins mycotoxins are most prevalent in the countries of South America.

The end of project meeting was held in April, 2013 where it announced the validated maize varieties that were released in different countries. Some of them are as follows:

1. Colombia 1 white variety
2. Honduras 3 white and 1 yellow variety
3. Panama 2 yellow and 1 white variety
4. Nicaragua 1 yellow and 1 white, 1 yellow hybrid

Three hybrids are still under validation due to out performance in locally held commercial checks in Peru. All these varieties are tolerant to tar spot disease commonly found in the countries of Latin America. Now it needs to be ensured by the policy makers that the products of this project reach as many farmers as possible for cultivation.