Role of morphological traits of different maize genotypes influencing the infestation status of pink stem borer, Sesamia inferens

Amongst different maize genotypes screened dead heart percentage was minimum in hybrid Hishell (0.76) whereas, all the remaining hybrids were found susceptible with dead heart percentage ranging between 6.83 to 21.44. Number of stem holes per plant ranged from 0.0 to 1.56. The longest tunnel length was recorded in maize hybrid 900 M-Gold (15.61 cm) The lowest tunnel length was recorded in maize hybrid DKC-9135 (1.32 cm). Hishell recorded highest (50.80 q/ha) grain yield while minimum yield was recorded in Cyrus (32.37 q/ha) followed by 900-M Gold (33.03 q/ha). Plant height (r = 0.899) showed highly significant and positive correlation with mean tunnel length (cm). Whereas, cob height (r =-0.7266), cob length (r =-0.8551) and length of central spike (r =-0.904) showed negative and significant correlation with mean tunnel length(cm) and overall contribution of 93.4 per cent was obtained by combining all the significant characters towards the tunnel length (cm) caused by Sesamia inferens.