STABILITY AND PHENOTYPIC CHARACTERIZATION OF EXPERIMENTAL AND COMMERCIAL HYBRIDS MAIZE IN FOUR CROPPING SEASONS

The performance of maize is highly influenced by environmentalvariations, what can result in a low yield average, and instability varying from region toregion, month to month, and year cropping to year cropping. These environmentaleffects can be different for each cultivar, characterizing the genotype x environment interaction, which needs to be evaluated to a more efficient recommendation of cultivars.This work was developed in the experimental farm at Universidade Estadual Paulista(UNESP) – Campus de Ilha Solteira, in Selvíria, Mato Grosso do Sul, in order to evaluatethe stability and adaptability of 20 experimental three-way - hybrid crosses and thecommercial hybrids XB 8010, DKB 333B, TORK and P 3041. The experiments wereinstalled in November/2000, December/2000, January/2001 and March/2001 in acompletely randomized blocks design with four replications. The evaluated traits were:plant height, ear height, percentage of erect plants, grain yield and percentage of burnedgrains. The most responsive hybrids to the most favorable crop season were HS 10 x L2,HS 32 x L2, HS 83 x L3 and TORK for the percentage of erect plants and HS 7 x L1, HS32 x L1, HS 83 x L1, TORK and P 3041 for grain yield. Under these improvedenvironments, an increase on the percentage of burned grains incidence was detected forthe hybrids HS 83 x L1, HS 7 x L1, HS 83 x L3, HS 10 x L3 and P 3041, although thisincrease was within commercially acceptable levels