Determination relevant breeding criteria by the path and factor analysis in maize

In the process of plant breeding the application of relevant breeding criteria is very important. The Path analysis is broadly applied with the aim to define yield components that mostly determine the yield and that can be used as quality breeding criteria. However, the significance of revealed relationships between yield and yield components can be affected by various factors, such as diverse genetic material that is observed, traits included into analysis, environments in which the material is observed, as well as, the applied statistic approach to determine the nature of the relationships itself. The interrelationships of yield and yield components of 15 commercial maize hybrids were observed using the Path and factor analyses. According to results of Path analysis, plant height, ear diameter and grain moisture had highly significant genetic and phenotypic direct effects on grain yield. At the same time, factor analysis points out significant effects of two factors on grain yield. Factor 1 was mostly determined by ear length and number of kernels per row, while grain moisture content, ear and cob diameter mostly determined Factor 2.