Assessing the Relevance of Indus Waters Treaty to the International Law on NonNavigational Uses of the International Watercourses

Indus Waters Treaty is the most comprehensive and complex document which divides Indus Rivers System between India and Pakistan. It has continued to function through three wars and various political tensions between both neighboring states. It was signed in 1960 when no international law was available to deal the non-navigational uses of the international watercourses. Since the Helsinki rules were adopted by the International Association of Law in 1966 and the United Nations Convention on International Water Courses was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1997, both documents have little effect on the terms and conditions of the Indus Waters Treaty. This paper is an attempt to explore the relevance of the provisions of the Treaty to the contemporary international law on non-navigational uses of the international rivers

Genetics of Some Potential Parameters in Zea Mays L. under Normal and Moisture Deficit Conditions

The germplasm for the conduct of present studies i.e. maize inbred lines were collected from various organizations working on maize crop and were sown in experimental area of the Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad (Pakistan) evaluating identification and purity. Based upon morphological characters and distinct features fifty promising inbred lines were ear-marked and selfed to obtain seed for further breeding manipulations. The selected inbred lines were screened against moisture stress condition in the greenhouse, Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad according to a Completely Randomized Design with three replications. On the basis of overall performance six inbred lines were selected and crossed in a complete diallel fashion. The parents, F 1 crosses and their reciprocals were sown for evaluation in a triplicate Randomized Complete Block Design under normal and moisture deficit conditions. Data for plant height, days to tasseling, days to silking, anthesis silking interval, days to maturity, grain yield per plant, 100-grain weight, ear leaf area, leaf temperature, relative water loss, cell membrane thermostability and photosynthetic rate were recorded from both the sets. Statistical analysis was conducted for gene action and combining ability estimates. The results revealed that material had significant variation for all the traits under study. Additive dominance model was fully or partially fit for all the traits under both conditions except anthesis-silking interval under normal conditions. Value of item” a” was significant for six traits under normal conditions and both a and b were significant for four traits. Under moisture stress conditions both additive and dominant gene action were significant for plant height, anthesis silking interval, grain yield per plant, ear leaf area, cell membrane thermostability and photosynthetic rate while additive gene action was significant for days to tasseling, days to silking, days to maturity, 100-grain weight, leaf temperature and relative water loss. Maternal effects for grain yield per plant, 100-grain weight and photosynthetic rate were significant under normal conditions while under moisture deficit conditions maternal effects were significant for days to tasseling, anthesis silking interval, grain yield per plant, 100-grain weight, ear leaf area and photosynthetic rate. Graphical presentation for gene action depicted that most of the traits including grain yield per plant displayed partial dominance under normal and moisture deficit conditions. Leaf temperature showed partial dominance under normal and complete dominance under moisture stress conditions. For grain yield per plant inbred line F-206 had the maximum dominant genes being nearest to the origin. Same was the case for 100-grain weight under normal conditions. Mean squares for general combining ability, specific combining ability and reciprocal effects were highly significant for all the traits under normal and moisture deficit conditions. Estimates of variance components due to general combining ability were greater than those of specific combining ability for all the traits under normal moisture deficit conditions. Reciprocal effects were found highly significant for all the traits under normal and moisture deficit conditions. Inbred line F-206 was best general combiner for most of the traits including grain yield per plant under both the conditions. The crosses F-192 × F-189 and F- 110 × F-206 exhibited good SCA effects with outstanding mean performance for grain yield under moisture stress condition.