Genetic Advances and Heritability Analysis for Seedling Growth Traits in Zea mays under Heavy Metal Stress

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important cereal crop grown throughout the world for its grain and fodder. Maize is very sensitive to salt, drought, heavy metal and cold stress conditions. An experiment was conducted in the green house of Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, The University of Lahore. EV-1097Q and B-316 maize genotypes were selected to access the effect of heavy metal stress with different concentrations. Seeds were grown in 42 pots filled with pure 2 kg sand. Different concentrations of heavy metals ZnSO4 includes control, viz., T1 (0.25 mM ZnSO4), T2 (0.5 mM ZnSO4), T3 (0.75 mM ZnSO4), and T4 (1 mM ZnSO4) were applied 4 times with 7days intervals. Data was recorded 4 times after each treatment for root length, shoot length, leaf length, dry plant weight and fresh plant weight. The collected data was pooled and analysed for analysis of variance and significant differences for different treatments and maize genotypes. The results revealed that there were significant differences among maize genotypes for studied traits on all treatments of heavy metals, the genotype EV-1097Q performed batter for all morphological traits as compared with B-316 genotype. The genetics advance and heritability were found higher for genotype EV-1097Q. The results from our study concluded that the EV-1097Q may be used to produce higher grain yielding maize genotypes under heavy metal stress conditions