HOW TO PRODUCE MAIZE FROM SEED

2. PRESENTED BY
M.SAKTHIMALAR

3. MAIZE
Botanical name : zea mays (2n=20)
Family : poaceae
Origin : Central America & Mexico
Pollination : Cross pollination

4. GENERAL DESCRIPTION
• Maize is the third most important food grain in India after wheat and
rice.
• In India about 28% of maize produced is used for food purpose, about
11% as livestock feed,48% as poultry feed, 12% in wet milling industry
(for starch & oil production ) and 1% as seed (AICRP on maize 2007).
• In the last one decade, it has registered the highest growth rate among all
food grains including wheat and rice because of newly emerging food
habits as well as enhanced industrial requirements.

5. COMPOSITION OF MAIZE
PROTEIN 10%
FAT 4%
CARBOHYDRATES 70%
CRUDE FIBRE 2-3%

6. BIOLOGY
• Maize is a tall determinate annual, C4 plant.
• It is varying height from 1-4m
• It producing large narrow ,opposite leaves

8. Classification of maize
1. Dent corn (Zea mays var identata sturt)
2. Flint corn (Zea mays var indurate sturt)
3. Popcorn (Zea mays var verta sturt)
4. Flour corn (Zea mays var anylacea sturt)
5. Sweet corn (Zea mays var Saceharata sturt)
6. Pod corn (Zea mays var tunicate kulesh)
7. Waxy corn (Zea mays var ceratina Kulesh)

9. FLORAL BIOLOGY
• Maize is a monoecious plant.
• Bisexual flower
• It is generally protandrous in nature( male flower matures
earlier than the female flower).
• Male inflorescence is called as tassel.
• Female inflorescence is called as cob.

10. Within each male flower spikelet, there are usually two
functional florets, although development of the lower floret
may be delayed slightly in comparison to the upper floret.
Each floret contains a pair of thin scales i.e.., Lemma and
palea, three anthers, two lodicules and rudimentary pistil.
Pollen grains per anther have been reported to range from 2000
to 7500.
Within an average of 7000 anthers per tassel and 2000 grains
per anther, each tassel could produce 14 x 6-10 pollen grains.

11. • In terms of the ratio of pollen grains produced per ovules
fertilized, it appears that since each ear requires about 1000
pollen grains for fertilization,
• There are about 20,000 pollen grains per kernel in excess of
what is actually needed if pollination were 100 percent
efficient.
• The pollen grains are very small, rarely visible to the naked
eye, light in weight, and easily carried by wind.
• The wind borne nature of the pollen and protandry lead to
cross-pollination, but there may be about 5% self-pollination.

14. TASSEL

17. COB

19. Varietal seed production
Land requirement
• The land should be fertile with selected irrigation and good drainage
facilities.
• It should be free from volunteer plants.
• The same crop should not have been grown in the previous season.

20. CLIMATE AND SEASON
CLIMATE
• Optimum temperature for germination : 18-20c
• Susceptible to frost , tolerant to hot temperature (<45c)
SEASON
• The best season is November to December
• Rainfed – adipattam (June-July) =CO1,COH1,COH2
• Puratasipattam – (Sep-Oct) = CO1,COH1,COH2
• Irrigated –Thaipattam –(Jan-Feb) = K1,CO11,COH1

21. ISOLATION DISTANCE
The minimum required isolation distance is ;
 Foundation seed : 400m
 Certified seed : 200m
PREPARATION OF LAND
 The land is ploughed well and brought into fine tilth condition.
 Form ridges and furrows

22. SEEDS AND SOWING
• Seed should be purchased from authenticated sources with tag.
• These seeds should be sown in ridges and furrows system at a depth of
4cm.
 SEED RATE – 10kg /ha.
 SPACING - 45*10 cm.

23. PRESOWING SEED TREATMENT
• Seeds are treated with captan or thiram @ 4gm/kg of seeds.
• Seeds may be treated with Azospirillum @ 600 gm/ha.

24. FERTILIZERS AND MANURES
• FYM – 12.5 t/ha at last ploughing.
• NPK-100:75:75 Kg/ha
• Basal application - 40:75:40 NPK kg/ha
• Top dressing - 50:0:0 NPK kg/ha (20DAS)
10:0:35 NPK kg/ha (40DAS)
• Foliar spray - 2% DAP spray (50% flowering stage)

25. IRRIGATION
• Irrigation should be given once in a week after life irrigation
(3 day after sowing).
• The critical stages of irrigation which affect the seed quality are
silk formation stage and milky stage.

26. WEEDING
• Apply the pre emergence herbicide Atrazine 50WP at 500
gm/ha 3 days after sowing as spray on the soil surface, followed
by one hand weeding on 40-45 days after sowing.

27. ROUGING
• The removal of unwanted, off type and diseased plants from
the seed production plot.
• Rouging is done based on leaf waviness, tassel colour, cob
shape, stem colour, silk colour, No of leaf and presence and
absence of auricle.

28. • To avoid genetic contamination detasselling should be done
perfectly without shedding tassel.
• Detasselling should be done when the tassel is well out of the
boot leaf but before the anthers shed their pollen.
• It should be done daily upto 14 days from anthesis.
• Maximum percentage of off-types permitted at the final
inspection(4) is 0.01% for foundation seed production and
0.05% for certified seed production.

29. DESIGNATED DISEASES AND PEST
Maize is affected by pests like stem borer, aphids, corn worm.
• Seed treatment with Imidacloprid 70WS 10g/kg of seeds.
• Spray methyl demeton 25EC 500 ml/ha or carbofuran 3%CG 33.3kg/ha, Dimethoate
30%EC 1155ml/ha.
Diseases like leaf spot, charcoal stalk rot and stem blight at different growth stages.
• Use disease resistant varieties.
• Seeds are treated with Captan or thiram 3kg/ha seed’
• Spray mancozeb 2.5g/lit or Dithane M-45. Crop rotation should be followed.

30. HARVESTING
• Seeds attain physiological maturation 45 days after flowering.
• The physiological maturation can be visually identified by
darkening of the silk and the drying up of the husk to yellow.
• The cobs of the male plant should be harvested first and
removed from the field before the harvesting of the female
cobs.

31. PROCESSING
Dehusking
 Harvested cobs are threshed by removing the husk either manually or
mechanically using maize dehusker.
Cob sorting
 The dehusked cobs are sorted out carefully to protect the genetic purity
of the seeds.
 The sorting is based on the number of rows, kernel colour and size, pith
colour and arrangement of seeds in the cob

32. PROCESSING
Shelling
 At the moisture content of 15-18% of the kernels are separated from the cob
either manually by beating with sticks or mechanically using maize sheller.
Drying
The shelled seeds are dried to 12% moisture content.
Grading
The kernels are graded using “ 18/64 “round perforated metal sieve.

33. • Yield – 25-30 Quintals per hectare
Seed standards for maize
FS CS
Pure seed 98% 98%
Inert Matter (max) 2% 2%
Other crop seeds (max) 5/kg 10/kg
Other distinguishable
varieties(max)
10/kg 20/kg
Weed seeds (max) none none
Germination (min) 90% 90%

34. HYBRID SEED
PRODUCTION

35. HYBRID SEED PRODUCTION
• TOOL : DETASSELING
• Detaselling is the physical removal of male part from the female plant
and there by allowing the plant to act as female which is crossed with
selected male plant and effective seed setting.
• Time for detasseling : The time taken for shedding of pollen from the
tassel in 1-2 days after emergence. Hence the tassel should be removed
before the shedding of pollen.

38. Types of hybrids
1. Single cross hybrid
2. Double cross hybrid
3. Three way cross hybrid

39. Single cross hybrid
• It is a cross between 2 inbreds, (A x B).
• A genotype will be detasseled(male) and crossed with B
genotypes(female).
COH 1- UMI 29 x UMI 51
 COH 2- UMI 810 x UMI 90
CoH (M) 5-UMI 285 X UMI 61

40. Double cross hybrid
• It is a cross between two single crosses.
• It is a cross between 2 hybrids (A x B) x (C x D).
• (A x B) single cross hybrid will be produced by detasseling A and
by crossing with B
• (C x D) hybrid will be produced by detasseling C and crossing with
D.
• Then (A x B) will be detasseled and crossed with (C x D) hybrid.

41. Double cross hybrid
Example
• Ganga 2 : (CM 109 x CM 110) x (CM 202 x CM 111)
• Ganga 101 : (CM 103 x CM 104) x (CM 201 x CM 206)
• COH3 : ( UMI 101 x UMI 130 ) x (UMI 90 x UMI 285 )

42. Three way cross hybrid
• It is a cross between a single cross and an inbred.
• It is first generation resulting from the crossing of on approved inbred line
and a certified open pollinated variety A x variety)
• A will be detasseled and allowed for crossing in the variety.
• Example
 Ganga -5 (CM 202 x CM 111) x CM 500.
COH (M) 4 : (UMI 90 x UMI 285) x UMI 112

43. Season - November- December, Mid July, Jan- Feb and Sep- Oct
Isolation distance
• Single cross (hybrid) –F.S-400M
• Single cross(parents)-F.S-400M
• other hybrids – C.S - 200M

45. SPACING
• Seeds are sown in ridges and furrows
Hybrids : 60 x 25 cm
Seed rate : Female : 7 -10 kg ha-1
Male : 3 -4 kg ha-1
Spacing : Female : 60 x 20 to 75 x 30 depending on the area.
Male :45 x 30 cm

46. PLANTING RATIO AND BORDER ROWS
TYPES OF HYBRID PLANTING RATIO BORDER ROWS
SINGLE CROSS HYBRID 4:2 4
DOUBLE CROSS
HYBRID
6:2 3
THREE WAY CROSS 6:2 4

47. FERTILIZER
NPK kg / ha 200 : 100 : 100
Basal 100 : 100 : 50
1st Top 50 : 0 : 0 (20th days -vegetative phase)
2nd Top 50 : 0 : 50 (Boot leaf stage at 45 days)
Foliar DAP 2% at 50% flowering
In Zn deficient soil ZnSO4 @ 25 kg ha-1

48. Roguing
• It should be done periodically based on position of cob, colour of silk,
arrangements of seeds in cob, leaves etc.
• Shedding tassels are to be removed in roguing .
• Field standard(%)
FS CS
Off types 0.2 0.5
Shedding tassel 0.5 1.0

49. FIELD INSPECTION : FOUR
ONE : Before flowering
THREE : During flowering
Harvest
 Harvest when the moisture content falls to 20-25% .
 Harvest male first and remove from the field and then harvest female.
Seed yield : 2.5 - 3.6 t/ha

50. SEED STANDARD FOR HYBRID
MAIZE
parameter FS CS
Physical purity (%) (min) 98 98
Inert matter (%) (max) 2 2
Other crop seed (max) 5/kg 10/kg
ODV seed (max) 5/kg 10/kg
Germination % (min) 90 90
Moisture content (%) (max)
a. Moisture pervious
b. Moisture vapour proof
12
8
12
8