In maize (Zea mays L.) breeding, the aim is to improve genetically by making use of the variability between different lines and by being able to recognize parent lines that, when crossed, give high-yielding hybrids. Hence, the objective of this research was to evaluate five lines and five testers along with their 25 F1 hybrids for 12 morphological and physiological traits. The experiment was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications at the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. It was found through analysis of variance that there were highly significant differences among the genotypes for various traits under study. Parents such as SG-1 were good sources of variability and also recorded higher means for traits like cob length, seeds per row, and 100-grain weight than other parental lines. The general combining ability (GCA) effect further portrayed that SG-1 contributed positively towards increased plant height, ear height, cob length, stem diameter, seeds per row, internodal length & cob diameter. On the other hand, results obtained from hybrids revealed that one cannot rely on the superior performance of a parent to predict how well the cross will do. While the SG-1 & WD-7 combination gave positive specific combining ability effects (SCA) for most of the traits, including the highest cob diameter, SG-5 & WD-8 were ranked among the top crosses with respect to 100 grain weight. Traits like plant height, ear height, and internodal length showed positive phenotypic correlations, whereas leaf temperature had an inverse relationship with chlorophyll content. The study recommends some parental and cross combinations that can be used further in breeding.
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