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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Breeding
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1509859
This article is part of the Research Topic Advancing Crop Disease Resistance Through Microbial-Assisted Breeding View all 6 articles

Combining Ability and Gene action for resistance to Fusarium Ear Rot in tropical maize hybrids

Provisionally accepted
Stella Bigirwa Stella Bigirwa 1,2Patrick Rubaihayo Patrick Rubaihayo 1John Bosco Sempiira John Bosco Sempiira 2Emmanuel AMPONSAH ADJEI Emmanuel AMPONSAH ADJEI 1Isaac Onziga Dramadri Isaac Onziga Dramadri 1Bonny Michael Oloka Bonny Michael Oloka 3Julius Pyton Sserumaga Julius Pyton Sserumaga 2*
  • 1 Makerere University Agricultural Research Institute, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda
  • 2 National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), Entebbe, Uganda
  • 3 Department of Horticultural Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A comprehensive understanding of the genetics of resistance is essential for developing an effective breeding strategy to create germplasm resistant to Fusarium Ear Rot. This study aimed to determine the general combining ability (GCA), specific combining ability (SCA), and heritability of resistance to infection by Fusarium verticillioides in tropical maize. Using the North Carolina II mating design, six inbred lines as females and seven as males were crossed to produce 42 hybrids, which were evaluated across five environments using artificial inoculation. At harvest, the hybrids were scored for Fusarium Ear Rot (FER) infection using a 1-9 severity scale. Significant GCA effects for the parents and SCA effects for the hybrids were observed. The narrow-sense heritability estimate was 0.22, while the broad-sense heritability was 0.73, and the additive genetic effects, as represented by GCA (m+f), were more significant than non-additive effects. The inbred parents JPS25-13, JPS26-125, JPS26-86, JPS25-11, JPS25-5, JPS25-7, and JPS25-9 were identified as the best general combiners for FER resistance. These lines, with favorable general combining ability effects for resistance to Fusarium verticillioides, are strong candidates for breeding resistant varieties.

    Keywords: Zea mays, Fusarium, Gene action, heritability, Genetics

    Received: 11 Oct 2024; Accepted: 08 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Bigirwa, Rubaihayo, Sempiira, ADJEI, Dramadri, Oloka and Sserumaga. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Julius Pyton Sserumaga, National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), Entebbe, Uganda

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.