OBJECTIVES OF BREEDING

Better quality, early maturity, resistance to biotic and abiotic factor. In maize, the major breeding objectives include higher grain yield, wider adaptation. The important components of grain yield are cob length, grain per cob, grain size. Quality characters include grain colour, size and luster, protein content, lysine content. The main diseases for which genetic resistance is required are black bundle disease, bacterial stalk rot, pythium stalk rot, brown stripe downy mildew. Maize protien is called Zien and is deficient in tryptophane and Lysine.

ORIGIN AND DISTRIBUTION

Maize is considered by most of authorities to be the Central America and Mexico, where many diverse type of maize are found. In the world it is grown in USA, Brazil, China, Mexico, India, France. In India UP, MP, Bihar, Rajasthan,punjab.

TAXONOMY
Common name:- Maize Scientific name:- Zea mays Family :-Poaceae Basic chr. 2n=20

FLORAL BIOLOGY
Maize is monoecious /cross pollinated crop. Male inflorescence is called Tassel and removal is called detasseling. The style is a very long silky filament,the cluster of which is known as Silk.

Varieties
First time in 1961 four double cross hybrid were released: Ganga1,Ganga101,Deccan,Ranjeet. Later on other double cross hybrid released VL54,Himalayan123,HIstarch,Ganga2,Ganga3,Ganga5.

BREEDING METHODS
In maize breeding approaches ar:. mass selection, progeny or ear to row selection, recurrent selection,. pedigree selection, backcross, hybrid, composite, synthetic, top crossing, double crossing. Double haploid and mutation tech. has been also used in maize breeding.

BREEDING CENTRE
Wheat and maize improvement centre(CIMMYT) Mexico. In India maize breeding work is carried out by state agriculture universities and coordinated project of ICAR. The all India coordinated maize improvement project (AICMIP) is located at IARI in Pusa campus.

Improtent varieties ICAR identifies 7 new hybrid varieties of maize for release are JH-10655,NECH-117,JKMH1701,FH-3211,FQH-4567 , HQPM-1 and JC1441is the composite variety. First time in 1961 four double cross hybrid were released: Ganga1,Ganga101,Deccan,Ranjeet. Later on other double cross hybrid released VL54,Himalayan123,Ganga3,Ganga5. Top cross varieties are Ganga2 and HI-Starch. Composites are Jawahar,Vikram,Kisan,Amber,sona,Vijay.

 Lysine rich composites are Protina and Rattan are called opaque-2 composites. Quality protine maize are released by using Opaque-2 gene ex..Shaktiman 1,Shaktiman 2 and HQPM1.