Response of maize varieties to graded levels of nitrogen grown under open and partial shade conditions

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at the Instructional farm, College of Agriculture, Vellayani, to find out the response of maize varieties to graded levels of nitrogen grown under open and partial shade conditions simultaneously with different levels of nitrogen viz. 0, 50, 100,150 and 200 kg/ha and five varieties via. AgAati-76, Deccan-101, Ganga safed-2, Histarch and Vijay. The experimental was laid out in a 5 x 5 simple lattice design with two replications and 25 treatment combinations. Nitrogen had significant effect on plant height number of leaves# leaf area index and dry matter production and the highest values were recorded at 200 kg N/ha under both open and partial shade conditions. Under open condition variety Ganga safed-2 produced the maximum height# number of leaves and leaf area index where as Vijay produced the maximum dry weight/plant. But under partial shade conditions Vijay recorded the maximum height of plants and dry weight plant whereas Ageti-76 recorded the maximum number of leaves and Ganga safed-2 the maximum leaf area index. Under open condition application of 200 kg N/ha recorded the highest number of cobs/plant length of cob and number of grains/cob, where as 150 kg N/ha was sufficient to produce the maximum girth and weight of cob and thousand grain weight. Butunder partial shade condition 150 kg N/ha was sufficient to produce the maximum length# girth and weight of cobs number of grains/cob and thousand grain weight where as 200 kg N/ha produced the maximum number of cobs/plant. The variety Ganga safod-2 performed good in these characters under both open and partial shade conditions. Minimum number of days to silking was recorded by Deccan-101 at 200 kg N/ha under both conditions