Inheritance of resistance against northern leaf blight of maize using conventional breeding methods

Nader R Abdelsalam; Maha G Balbaa; Hassan T Osman; Rehab Y Ghareeb; El-Sayed M Desoky; Ahmed M Elshehawi; Bandar S Aljuaid; Ahmed S M Elnahal

doi:10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.10.055

Inheritance of resistance against northern leaf blight of maize using conventional breeding methods

Saudi J Biol Sci. 2022 Mar;29(3):1747-1759. doi: 10.1016/j.sjbs.2021.10.055. Epub 2021 Oct 26.

Authors

Nader R Abdelsalam¹, Maha G Balbaa², Hassan T Osman², Rehab Y Ghareeb³, El-Sayed M Desoky⁴, Ahmed M Elshehawi⁵, Bandar S Aljuaid⁵, Ahmed S M Elnahal⁶

Affiliations

¹ Agricultural Botany Department, Faculty of Agriculture (Saba Basha), Alexandria University, 21531 Alexandria, Egypt.
² Maize Research Department, Field Crops Research Institute, Agriculture Research Center, Egypt.
³ Plant Protection and Biomolecular Diagnosis Department, Arid Lands Cultivation Research Institute, The City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications, New Borg El Arab, Alexandria 21934, Egypt.
⁴ Botany Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt.
⁵ Department of Biotechnology, College of Science, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia.
⁶ Plant Pathology Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44511, Egypt.

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays L.) is one of the important cereal crops along with wheat and rice worldwide. The purpose of this study was to use classical genetic approaches to assess the resistance of various maize parents and hybrids to the northern corn leaf blight (NCLB) disease in two different locations in Egypt. Eight parents, 28 F1, and 2 check hybrids were evaluated. The analysis of variance showed high significant variations between maize parents and their hybrids for the studied parameters and NCLB disease, besides there are significant variations between both locations. Results of maize parents showed that Sids 63, Giza 602, and Giza 628 cultivars exhibited the highest values and were resistant to NCLB in both locations comparing with Nubaria 39 and Gemmiza 18 that were susceptible to NCLB disease. Concerning the maize hybrids, analysis of variance and mean squares of growth characters in both locations indicated high significant variations between the maize hybrids including the check hybrids. When combined between the two locations for current parameters against NCLB, the data pointed that the Sakha location values for maize hybrids were much closed to the combining data in parents and the hybrids detected high resistance to this disease comparing with Nubaria location. All tested maize lines (38 lines), including parents and hybrids were classified as follows, two lines were rated as 1 (highly resistant), three were rated as 2 (resistant), sixteen were rated as 3 (moderate resistant), eight were rated 4 (moderately susceptible) and nine were rated 5 (susceptible). The data explaining that the crossing between high resistant maize cultivars produced high levels of resistance to NCLB disease. Therefore, our results verified that classical breeding could efficiently increase the resistance levels of maize germplasm against NCLB disease by developing new cultivars with superior performance in terms of grain yield, disease resistance and grain quality.

Keywords: Breeding; Growth characters; Hybrid; Maize; Northern leaf blight disease.