Analysis of the pre-registration maize breeding trials and the germplasm developed in Altınova breeding station from 2015 to 2018

Main goal of the most breeding programs is to develop highly adaptive hybrids in various environments, and the most important limitation are complex interactions between genotype, environment and management. Every hybrid breeding program follows certain strategy for new hybrid development. One possible strategy is to develop hybrids with lower adaptability, achieving best performance in “high input” environments (breeding for “race-horses”). However, another approach is to breed for hybrids with higher adaptability and stable performance across a wide range of environments (breeding for “work-horses”). High stability needs to be accompanied by high yield performance to insure profits, so stability should be monitored along with performance in breeding trials. Aim of this research was to analyze the new germplasm developments and their performances in the pre-registration trials in Turkey by the means of BLUP and GGE models. Heritability estimates for grain yield ranged from 0.58 to 0.85, and relative stability of all hybrids and checks is detected across all years. Cause of the high estimates of G×L interaction were crossovers of genotype performances across locations. The location Altinova was the least stable location across years. One hybrid was selected as a future check based on stability parameters across environments. As G×E interaction remains the greatest challenge in modern maize breeding, more research is needed in this field. Therefore mixed-model based approach is a valuable tool for analysis of genotype performances in maize breeding trials.