After a month of experiment, rigorous review, countless revision, editing and manuscript preparation our research article entitled “Varietal evaluation of hybrid maize in the summer and winter seasons in terai region of Nepal” has been published in Scopus indexed Heliyon Journal.

Maize is the major cereal of Nepal both in terms of production and use ranking second in production after rice and being widely used for human consumption and for agro-industries (feed industry for poultry, fish and cow). Its cultivation is diverse, ranging from Terai and Inner- Terai to the hilly regions of the country. Hills practice rainfed farming whereas irrigated conditions prevail in the Terai and Inner- Terai regions of Nepal. Mainly maize is sown in spring season after harvesting of wheat in mid-hills and both in spring and summer in Terai region of Nepal.

The use of Open Pollinated variety (OPV) is high in mid-hills but in Terai region, hybrid maize tends to be dominating with increase in yield per hectare. There are several maize varieties available in Nepal's seed market from different international corporations, some of which are registered and some of which are not. This leads to a variety of issues in Nepal, from barren cob to a high disease incidence and low plant stand. Hybrid maize has potential of giving 20–30% more grain yield in comparison to other cultivated maize varieties. In rice-wheat based farming system with irrigation facility, hybrid maize is best option for catch crop in mid hill and Terai.

The study of genotypes in different seasons is desired as a genotype suitable for summer cultivation may not be suitable for winter and vice versa and some can perform optimally with stable production in both seasons. The variation in yield and yield attributing traits of maize has also been associated with variation in agro-climatic conditions and cropping domain.

Though there are 45 registered commercial maize hybrids in Nepal, the hybrids that performs better with stable grain yield in individual and across the season is not studied. Due to fragmentation, the majority of farmers in developing nations have extremely limited access to land, and the hybrid maize seed that is available is rarely used entirely in a single cropping season. Therefore, small landholder farmers may find it advantageous to adopt high yielding maize cultivars in both seasons, improving the productivity of the crop, if we were able to identify high yielding and stable varieties/hybrids for both the summer and winter seasons. The demand of hybrid seeds of maize is almost dependent on India with very few national hybrids (Released by National Maize Research Program (NMRP), Chitwan) under cultivation, among which Rampur hybrid-10 is one of the most promising heat resilient maize hybrid. Due to open border with India, hybrid seeds enter Nepalese market and farmers field without any certification and registration procedure which have caused huge difficulty in relation to production, incidence of disease and pest and crop failure at early stage. Nowadays, NMRP is conducting multi location, multi environment and multi-year trials to identify the stable, high yielding and promising maize genotypes. Followingly, it is also conducting performance trial of various multinational companies and their registration for Nepalese market. Large number of genotypes were suggested for cultivation but they do not perform optimally in all environment. Thus, genotypes are recommended for diverse ecological condition rather than specific ecological condition. Thus, this study was conducted as per farmers demand in Sunsari district with an objective identify the high yielding maize for cultivation in both the seasons to study genetic variability, correlation and AMMI analysis for yield and yield related traits that would aid in crop improvement programs.

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