Comparative Study of White Grain Candidate Maize (Zea mays L.) Hybrids

Developing countries are struggling to develop cost effective maize hybrids that compete with those developed by  the multinational companies that are high yielding but costly for area growers. For this purpose a study was conducted at the cereal crops research institute (CCRI) Pir-sabaq Nowshera, Pakistan using nine candidate maize hybrids developed at CCRI along with commercial hybrid '30k08' of Pioneer and cultivar 'Jalal' compared for yield and agronomic traits. A randomized complete block design was used. Highly significant differences (P≤0.01) were observed for grain yield, days to silking and pollen shedding which were significant (P≤0.05). On the basis of pollen shedding the genotypes ranged from 71 (genotype 7) days to 80 for 'CCRI-corn-4'. The gap between silking and pollen shedding varied from 3 to 4 days, where the early silking genotype was CCRI-corn-8 (74 days) while the late silking genotype was 'CCRI-corn-1' with 81 days. Genotypes were categorized as short, medium and tall and ranged from 215.5 cm ('CCRI-corn-5') to 177.5 cm ('CCRI-corn-2'). Grain yield ranged from 7.77 to 12.09 tons per Ha with the maximum production recorded for CCRI-corn-5. The number of ears and plants per hectare were non-significant, however, the maximum ears/cobs were recorded for CCRI-corn-5 while the least cobs per hectare were recorded for CCRI-corn-3. Similarly, the ear height, though non-significant, ranged from 93.5 cm to 110.5 cm where the high yielding CCRI-corn-5 had the ear height more than the rest of the genotypes. The study showed that CCRI-corn-5 was promising on the basis of their yield and agronomic performance as compared to the local cultivar Jalal and the hybrid 30k08.