GENETIC VARIABILITY IN MINERAL COMPOSITION AMONG DIFFERENT STRESS TOLERANT MAIZE (Zee mays L.) GENOTYPES IN KEFFI, NASARAWA STATE

Genetic variability m mineral composition among different stress tolerant maize genotypes was carried out. Thirteen genotypes and two local checks (control) were evaluated in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications. The twelve agronomic characters studied were plant height, ear per plant, anthesissilking interval, days to pollen, days to silking, days to maturity, number of cob per plant, leave length, Zinc, Magnesium, and grain yield. The result obtained from the analysis of variance for all the agronomic traits studied showed significant differences among all the genotypes at (P < 0.01). The highest mean value for zinc was seen in SAM 15 (3.39 mg/kg), followed by SAM 24 (3.26 mg/kg) and L2 (control) (3.16 mg/kg). The least mean value for zinc was found in SAM 37 (2.25 mg/kg). The highest mean values for magnesium was found in LI (control) (6.53 mg/kg), followed by SAM 38 (6.48 mg/kg) and SAM 15 and L2 (control) (6.45 mg/k0). The least mean value was found in SAM 46 and SAM 37 (5.98 mg/kg). The mean performance for Iroi. :!'owed there was significant difference between the genotypes. SAM 48 had the highest mean value (8.35 mg/kg; for iron, followed by SAM 26 (4.05 mg/kg) and SAM 46 (3.83 mg/kg). SAM 24 had the least mean value (2.09 mg/kg). Correlation studies revealed Magnesium to be positive and significantly correlated zinc (r = 0.52). Number of cub per plant was positively correlated to ear per plant (r = 1.00) while ear per plant was significant and negatively correlated to zinc (r = - 0.381) and magnesium (r = -0.341). The results from this research have shown that high genetic variability exist with regards to mineral composition and this warrant effective selection for further improvement. The results from the broad sense heritability estimates for the 12 characters studied showed that all the characters are heritable with values range from 69.11 for leaf length to 100.00 for zinc, magnesium and iron. The information presented in this research should be of value to nutritionists. This paper thus recommend that SAM 48 be giving to children because of its iron content.