CORRELATION AND PATH COEFFICIENT ANALYSIS BETWEEN GRAIN YIELD AND SOME GROWTH AND YIELD COMPONENTS OF MAIZE (ZEA MAYS L.) GENOTYPE AS INFLUENCED BY DROUGHT AND HEAT STRESS CONDITIONS IN SUDAN SAVANNAH OF NIGERIA

Experiments were conducted at the Teaching and Research farm of the Department of Crop Science Kano University of Science and Technology, Wudil and on a farmer’s field at Dambatta Local Government Area, with eight maize genotypes to assess the character associations among the genotypes for yield attributes. The experiment was conducted during February to June 2021 and also 2022, in a lattice design with three replications in both years and locations and are made to determine the performance of the genotypes in interacting environments. The genotypes differed significantly for most of the studied traits. Grain yield was significantly associated with plant height, anthesis silking interval, days to maturity, ear height, ears per plant, grain weight per plant in a positive direction and associated negatively with tassel blast, barren plant and leaf senescence. Path co-efficient analysis revealed that the maximum positive direct contribution towards yield was through grain weight per plant, plant height, and ears per plant whereas ear height showed negative direct contribution to grain yield due to negative indirect effects of several other parameters such as ear height via grain weight per plant, plant height via grain weight per plant.