Drought induction in maize (zea mays l.) through water stress treatments

Maize (Zea mays L.) is an important cereal crop, world wide it ranks number three after both wheat and rice, while in the Sudan it ranks number four after wheat, sorghum and pearl millet. It is generally used as human food and animal feed. In the Sudan, it is grown mainly under rain fed conditions, where the crop faces occasional unpredictable variable amounts and mal distributed rainfall. Accordingly, development of drought tolerant cultivars is a necessity for grain yield maximization and expansion of maize cultivation under the prevailing environmental conditions. This study was conducted for two consecutive seasons (2004 _ 2006) to evaluate the effect of water stress on maize growth and grain yield with the objective of determining the appropriate treatment for inducing drought conditions artificially for the selection of drought tolerant cultivars. Three watering regimes were used: W1, irrigation every ten days, W2 irrigation every fifteen days and W3 irrigation every twenty days. Two maize cultivars were used, an open pollinated variety (Mugtama-45) and a hybrid (H-351). The experimental design was a split plot design with water treatments as main plots and maize cultivars as sub plots. Standard cultural practices were applied. The hybrid significantly out yielded the open pollinated variety only in season 2004, giving 2473 and 1170 kg/ha, respectively. In the first season, the grain yield under both W1 and W2 was not significantly different (2388 and 1695 kg/ha, for the two treatments, respectively), while under W3 it was significantly reduced (1381 kg/ha) compared to the well watered treatment (W1). No significant differences were observed in the second season due to the interference of rainfall. Watering regime and crop cultivars showed no significant interaction for the traits under investigation. From this study W3 was realized as a treatment which could be used to induce drought conditions artificially, for selection purposes in maize breeding programs