Breeding Potential of European Flint Maize Landraces Evaluated by their Testcross Performance

ABSTRACT A plethora of maize (Zea mays L.) landraces is stored in gene banks worldwide. However, information about their value in breeding is scarce and strategies for identifying the most promising landraces in prebreeding are largely lacking. This study was conducted to (i) evaluate the testcross performance of 70 European flint landraces in combination with two elite dent testers and compare these results with the performance of modern hybrids for important agronomic traits, (ii) estimate the genetic variances among landraces and trait correlations for these two testcross series as well as the correlation between them, and (iii) devise a testing scheme for assessing the breeding potential of a large number of landraces for hybrid breeding. Grain yield of the landrace testcrosses was on average about 26% lower than modern hybrids. Genotypic variances among landrace testcrosses were significant for all traits, and genetic correlations were moderate to high for most trait combinations in both testcross series. Thus, it seems promising to tap this huge genetic reserve for enlarging the genetic base of the elite flint germplasm pool in Central Europe. Since the genetic correlation between the two testcross series exceeded 0.74 for all traits, we recommend assessing the breeding potential of landraces for broadening existing heterotic groups by evaluating their testcross performance in combination with one or two elite single‐cross tester(s) from the opposite heterotic pool. Subsequently, doubled haploid lines from a few of the most promising landraces could be produced to exploit the large genetic variation within landraces to the full extent.