Abstract:

Maize is called king of cereals because of its productivity potential compared to any other cereal crop. Row spacing is crop management tool which affect plant growth and yield. Optimum plant density of maize crop varies considerably depending upon climatic conditions of the growing area and fertility status of the soils. A field experiment was conducted at Bajeng Experimental Station, South Sulawesi, Indonesia from10th April to 22nd July 2016. Texturally, the soil was silty clay with pH 6.6; 1.06% organic matter, 0.13% total nitrogen, 64.04 mg kg-1 available phosphorus and 0.45 mg kg-1 available potassium. The experiment aimed to evaluate of various planting patterns and plant density on yield component and grain yield of hybrid maize under field condition. The experiment was conducted in Randomized Complete Block Design arrangement with three replications. Hybrid maize variety Bima-4 was used for the study. The treatment included of 5 levels of plant density (71428, 74074, 79365, 88888 and 95238 plants ha-1) and two planting patterns (single row and twin rows). The result of the experiment showed that planting pattern and plant density significantly influenced plant height, leaf chlorophyll, ear length, 1000-grain and grain yield.  The twin rows (100-40 cm x 15 cm), its population density of 95238 plants ha-1 produced the highest grain yield (10.97 t ha-1).