In the process of plant breeding the application of relevant breeding
criteria is very important. The Path analysis is broadly applied with the aim
to define yield components that mostly determine the yield and that can be
used as quality breeding criteria. However, the significance of revealed
relationships between yield and yield components can be affected by various
factors, such as diverse genetic material that is observed, traits included
into analysis, environments in which the material is observed, as well as,
the applied statistic approach to determine the nature of the relationships
itself. The interrelationships of yield and yield components of 15 commercial
maize hybrids were observed using the Path and factor analyses. According to
results of Path analysis, plant height, ear diameter and grain moisture had
highly significant genetic and phenotypic direct effects on grain yield. At
the same time, factor analysis points out significant effects of two factors
on grain yield. Factor 1 was mostly determined by ear length and number of
kernels per row, while grain moisture content, ear and cob diameter mostly
determined Factor 2.
Improved RIDIT statistic approach provides more intuitive and informative interpretation of EQ-5D data
