EVALUATING SHORT STATURE AND HIGH YIELDING MAIZE HYBRIDS IN MULTIPLE ENVIRONMENTS USING GGE BIPLOT AND AMMI MODELS

In Bangladesh, maize stands second place after rice; since it faces diverse natural calamities during its highest growing season (rabi/winter), particularly strong storm during the reproductive stage. Sometimes in some regions, this crop is completely damaged by natural disasters. Considering the burning issue, thirteen hybrids, including 10 previously selected short stature hybrids were evaluated against three local and standard checks: 'BHM-9', '981' and 'Sunshine' in two consecutive years in seven locations of Bangladesh. Combined analysis over locations and seasons instigated that genotypes 'Sunshine', '981' and 'G10' were the top-high yielders, while genotypes 'G1', 'G2', 'BHM-9' and 'Sunshine' were found the most stable. On the other hand, five genotypes such as 'G3', 'G4', 'G6', 'G8' and 'G9' had the below-average mean yield and the genotypes 'G6' and 'G9' were the most unstable. Among the seven environments, Jamalpur, Joydebpur and Dinajpur were most discriminating and Ishwardi was the least discriminating; whereas Joydebpur was more representative and Borishal was the least representative of other test environments. In the case of plant and ear height, most of the genotypes showed a lower value than all the checks, which was desirable. But among the top three high yielders, local cross-genotype, the 'G10' had the lowest and more stable value for both plant height and ear height. Therefore, considering the plant and ear height, grain yield, and yield stability, the genotype 'G10' has been recommended for release as commercial variety and has been released as new maize variety in Bangladesh with the local name of 'BARI Hybrid Maize-16' (BHM-16).