PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF MAIZE HYBRIDS UNDER RAINFED ENVIRONMENTS ACROSS MIDDLE HILLS OF NEPAL

Hybrid plays an important role in production and productivity increment of maize in potential pockets of middle hills. With an objective of identifying potential hybrids for middle hill environments, coordinated varietal trials on maize hybrids were conducted using randomized complete block design with three replications in various hill stations during summer of 2014/15 and 2015/16. During 2014/015, significant differences were recorded among the genotypes at Khumaltar and Pakhribas, where non-significant at Kabre for grain yield. Combined results of hill stations for grain yield revealed highly significant differences for genotypes, environments and, genotype by environment interactions indicating existence of variability among the tested genotypes at each site except at Kabre, and site specific nature of the tested hybrids was recorded. JM-8 produced the highest grain yield of 8356 kg ha-1 followed by RL-153/RL-105 (8006 kg ha-1), RML-95/RL-105 (7940 kg ha-1) and Khumal Hybrid-2 (7788 kg ha-1), respectively. In 2015/16, among the experimented hybrids highly significant grain yield differences were observed at Pakhribas and Khumaltar, and significant at Dailekh. Combined results over locations showed that RML-95/RL-197 (7365 kg ha-1) outyielded others and followed by RML-95/RL-105 (7010 kg ha-1), RML -151/RL-111 (6717 kg ha-1) and RML -87/RL-105 (6580 kg ha-1). Hybrids having higher grain yield in coordinated varietal trials will be promoted to Coordinated Farmers’ Field Trial on Hybrid and these hybrids might be the potential hybrids in future for potential pockets of middle hills of Nepal.