Performance of maize crop submitted to different populations of plants and topdressing N doses

Abstract

There are many factors that interfere in the yield of maize crop, such as the population arrangement and the application of topdressing N. However, it is important to study how these factors interact with each other. Thus, the purpose of this work was to study how different plant populations and topdressing N doses influence the yield and yield components of the maize crop. The experiment was conducted in RBD in a 2 x 4 x 5 factorial scheme, with four replications, being: two crops seasons (2014/15 and 2015/16), four plant populations (55,000, 70,000, 85,000 and 100,000 plants ha-1) and five topdressing N doses (0, 75, 150 and 225 kg ha-1 of N). There was a difference between the crops seasons for all variables studied, except for the grain/ear. The topdressing N doses provided increased in yield, TGW, number of grains/row and grains/ ear. With the increase of the plant population there was an increase in yield, height of insertion of the first ear and plant height and decrease of TGW, number of rows/ear, grains/row and grains/ear. There was no interaction between plant population and topdressing N doses, which suggests that the topdressing N dose applied is independent of the population of plants used.