Morphological characterization of tropical maize (Zea mays L.) inbred lines

Morphological traits expressed by plants result from genotype, the environment where they grow, and the interaction between genotype and environment. These traits are expressed according to the plant’s physiological responses to various environmental stimuli. A comparative evaluation was conducted on the main morphological traits of 20 inbred lines from Semillas Valle S.A. hybrid maize breeding program in Colombia. Correlations were found between some traits using a principal component analysis (PCA), where the two main components were plotted in a two-dimensional scatter diagram, and the results were corroborated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. Significant relationships were observed between male flowering time (DTT) and female flowering time (DTS), between plant height (PH) and ear height (EH), and between plant height (PH) and the internode number (IN). No relationships were found between ear height (EH) and number of rows (NR), or between ear weight (EW) and leaf length (LL) or seed index (SI).