Response of Main Maize Varieties to Water Stress and Comprehensive Evaluation in Hebei Province

Abstract

Drought is a serious threat to maize production in Hebei province. Planting drought resistant maize varieties is an effective measure to solve drought in arid and less rain areas. Drought resistance in maize is controlled by many genes, and multiple indexes should be used for comprehensive evaluation (Campos H et al.2004). In the arid rain shed, using 34 maize varieties to promote crop production compared to the drought resistance test. The experiment was conducted with two treatments of drought stress (irrigation only at seedling stage) and normal irrigation, and 12 agronomic traits related to drought resistance of maize were determined. The results showed that drought had significant effects on maize yield and main agronomic characters. Under drought stress, plant height, ear length, bare tip, ear row number, row grains, 1000-kernel weight, ASI index can be used as identification index of drought resistance of maize in different period. The results indicated that the variety with strong drought resistance is Zhongdi175, the worst drought resistance is Woyu964.