Sources sink relationship in hybrid maize (Zeamays L.)

Maize is one of the most important cereal crops in the World’s agricultural economy both as food for humans and feed for animals and poultry. Maize is known as “Queen of Cereals” due to its higher yield potential compared to other cereals. In India it is the third most important food crop after rice and wheat. The demand for maize is increasing day by day in India, owing to the increased demand for poultry and cattle feed and for the same reason it is also emerging as an important cereal crop in India. In crop plants, the physiological basis of dry matter production is dependent on the source-sink concept, where the source is the potential capacity for photosynthesis and the sink is the potential capacity to utilize the photosynthetic products. Hence, for improving attainable crop yields the knowledge of yield forming physiological processes such as source-sink relationships is required. Many studies have been conducted on source-sink relationship in different crops including maize to understand this phenomenon towards maneuvering such crops. Since, maize being the sink limiting crop, it is important to study the source-sink relationship to improve the sink capacity and maize yield