Silage yield and quality traits in elite maize hybrids and their relationship to elemental concentrations in juvenile plants

摘要

European silage maize is cultivated for animal feed and biogas production. We evaluated 210 factorial crosses of elite dent and flint lines in multilocation trials for agronomic and quality traits together with biomass and shoot concentrations of 10 elements in juvenile plants. Significant genotypic variances, mainly due to general combining ability variance of the dent lines, and high heritabilities were observed for dry matter yield (DMY) and quality traits. DMY was not correlated with quality traits, but methane fermentation yield (MFY) and metabolizable energy content (MEC) showed significant correlations with starch and fibre content. Concentrations of elements N,P,S,K were positively correlated with each other but only in few cases correlated with DMY and quality traits. Parent lines with contrasting P concentrations differed in root morphology traits. Results support DMY as primary trait for selection of silage maize hybrids, but MFY is of negligible importance in breeding for biogas contrary to MEC for animal feed. Neither biomass nor elemental composition of juvenile plants were of predictive value for final DMY or quality traits.