Agronomic characters, yield components and grain yield evaluation of 11 new hybrid maize prospective genotypes

Abstract

Maize (Zea mays L.) is the second important commodity after rice in Indonesia. As of 2015, more than 3 million tons of maize grain still need to be imported. It is caused by productivity of maize which remains low due to the lowness proportion of hybrid maize seed. In addition to a single cross, threeway cross seed is still necessary as alternatives for farmers rather than open pollinated cultivar ones. The purpose of this study was to evaluate grain yield of 11 prospective genotypes utilizing BISI 18 and Sukmaraga as control cultivars. Randomized block design (RBD) with three replications was adopted. The study was carried out in the dry season 2015. The result of this study showed that at 95% confidence level (a=0.05), prospective genotype SSUSX48274 performed significantly better than BISI 18 and Sukmaraga, while others yielded significantly better than Sukmaraga, but equal to BISI 18. All new prospective genotypes could be included in the multilocation trial in order to release superior varieties.