Yielding and phenotypic stability of corn cultivars in three municipal districts of Pará State, Brazil

Abstract

The area cultivated with grains in the State of Pará, Brazil, is around 553 thousand hectares and 57% of this area is cultivated with corn. Corn average yield is very low due to the production systems adopted which do not include the use of fertilizers, liming and adapted cultivars. The objective of this work was to evaluate the yielding performance and the phenotypic stability of corn cultivars under four environments. Thirty-seven commercial and pre-commercial corn cultivars were used in a simple 6x6 lattice. The plots consisted of two rows of 5 m, spaced 0.90 m apart with 5 plants/m after thinning. There were significant differences by the F test for most sources of variation taken into account. Within the group of highest yielding cultivars, yield varied from 5.64 to 6.58 ton/ha and within the second group, between 4.03 and 5.52 ton/ha of grains. The variety BR-5102 used as control was classified in the highest-yielding cultivars group, outyielding more than 66% of the cultivars tested. The cultivars which presented the lowest risk of adoption for recommendation were AG 4051, C 333B and 984-N. The results showed that it is possible to identify cultivars bearing good yielding performance and good stability.