Evaluation of Exotic Lines of Maize for Forage Traits

One hundred and thirty-seven lines of maize were evaluated against African Tall and J 1006 at Indian Grassland and Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi, in an unreplicated design for various forage traits. All the lines exhibited lesser green fodder yield as compared to African Tall. African Tall recorded green yield/3 plants as 3.8 kg whereas maximum yields i.e. 2.62 kg was recorded in Hyd 9997–1580. African tall recorded high DMY (1.2 kg) as compared to maximum yield recorded in germplasm line Hyd 99–129 (0.544 kg). Lines such as Hyd 997–1544, -1551, -1552, -1577, and -1666 showed at par or slightly better (%) dry matter as compared to African Tall. Except dry matter per cent and the days to 50% flowering, the various morphological traits under study showed positive correlation with green fodder yield. A total of 50% flowering among the germplasm lines was attained as early as within 48 days of sowing. African tall and J1006 were quite late and showed 50% flowering after 70 to 73 days of sowing. Per day per plant green as well as dry matter productivity of African Tall was very high. Certain germplasm lines with comparatively high per day productivity, green and dry matter productivity can be further exploited in breeding programmes in order to breed early flowering varieties with high biomass productivity. The values of skewness were found to be very low for leaf width, number of nodes, green fodder yield and per day productivity indicated a marginal deviation of modal value from the mean. The values of kurtosis for all the traits were in low range sketching platycurtic curve indicating high range of variability in the population. The quality parameters estimated on selected lines revealed that the crude protein (CP) ranged from 9.3% to 10.64% at 50% flowering stage. Natural detergent fibre content ranged from 67.32% to 72.13, acid detergent fibre ranged from 38.91% to 42.57%, lignin content and ash content ranged from 6.98% to 9.67% and 9.63% to 12.08 respectively.