332. Noorka IR, Taufiqullah, Heslop-Harrison JS, Schwarzacher T. 2017. The agriculture-nutrition-health nexus at the cost of water availability in maize diverse genotypes to ensure food security. International Journal of Water Resources and Arid Environments 6(2): 242-251, 2017 ISSN 2079-7079 publisher site: https://psipw.org/attachments/article/401/13e.pdf

Originally published as:  2016. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Water Resources and the Arid Environments (ICWRAE 7): 569-578. A presentation by Dr Ijaz Rasool Nooka, University of Sargodha, Pakistan, at the 7th International Conference on Water Resources and the Arid Environments (ICWRAE 7) http://icwrae-psipw.org/ 4-6 December 2016, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Link to manuscript: noorka_agriculture_nutrition_health_nexus_water_saudi.

Link to published manuscript: Noorka-Agriculture_Nutrition_Health_Nexus_at_the_Cost_of_Water_AvailabilityIntJWaterRes

A study is made of the use and conservation of important crop plant biodiversity under limited water supply to combat water stress conditions prevailing now throughout the world, creating food shortages and reducing agricultural sustainability. The main objective here is to find suitable plant material which can be grown in arid environments by using crosses and checking the combining abilities, to bear water stress in their life cycles. The most versatile plant, maize, is used by line × tester mating fashion to estimate general and specific combing ability in self and cross combinations of diverse maize genotypes under different water stress environments in Pakistan. Twelve parental genotypes, comprising eight lines and four testers, were crossed to produce 32 F1 hybrids. In next crop season the parents along with their hybrids were evaluated with three water treatments in two seasons. Results showed the nature and magnitude of general and specific combining ability for grain yield and yield related traits like plant height, leaf area, number of kernels per row, ear length, ear diameter, grain yield per plant and harvest index. The significant estimates of GCA and SCA suggested the importance of both additive and non-additive gene actions for the expression of the traits which can help for the selection of parents to be used for the development of useful synthetics and hybrids resilient to contrasting water regimes.