Phenotypic diversity and selection of superior tropical sweetcorn inbred lines by multivariate method and combining ability analysis

Sweetcorn is an important vegetable crop with high sugar content and economical value in US, Asia countries. Develop parental lines is core technology in hybrid sweetcorn breeding. This study applied the multivariate selection method to categorize and select elite tropical sweetcorn inbred lines for specialty corn breeding in Vietnam. Forty-two sweetcorn inbred lines was laid out in randomized complete block design with three replications in the field experiment from in Spring season 2021, Vietnam National University of Agriculture, Vietnam. Hierarchical clustering on principal component analysis was classified sweetcorn inbred lines into four major groups. Applied MGIDI index with 20 % selection intensity has identified two purple sweetcorn inbred lines, viz, N14, N41, a white sweetcorn inbred line N09, and five yellow sweetcorn inbred lines, viz, N05, N24, N25, N28, N39. General combining ability (GCA) analysis in Spring season 2022 showed that N39 have high positive GCA value on marketable yield and N28 have high positive GCA on total soluble solids.