Effects of varieties and planting density on plant traits and water consumption characteristics of spring maize

Varieties and planting density are reference basis for water saving and high-yielding cultivation of spring maize in Western Liaoning. Taking the low seeding density cultivar DY12 and high density type cultivar ZD77 as experimental materials, a field experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of four planting densities on plant traits, water consumption, ear characters, yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of spring maize, and the differences in all characters between the two types of varieties were analyzed. The results showed that with the increase of planting density, the stem diameter, the leaf area per plant of ZD77 and DY12 decreased gradually, their plant heights, the leaf area index (LAI) increased gently, and the stem diameter of DY12 and plant height of ZD77 in different planting densities reached a significant difference respectively (P<0.05). Under the same planting density condition, plant height and stem diameter of DY12 were higher than that of ZD77, while LAI of the ZD77 was larger than that of DY12, thus ZD77 showed a strong resistance to the high density planting. With the planting density increasing, water consumption during the whole growth period of both varieties increased, but water consumption of ZD77 was lower than that of DY12 under the same planting density condition. With the increase of planting density, yield increased first and then decreased. The effects of planting densities on ear diameter, row numbers and 100–grain weight for DY12 were not obvious, and the differences in other yield characters of different planting densities reached significant levels (P<0.05), while the effects of planting densities on each yield characters of ZD77 were not significant. With the increase of planting density, the WUE of DY12 increased first and then decreased, and when the planting density was 45 000 plants/hm2, its WUE reached the maximum (2.48 kg/m3). The WUE of ZD77 showed a decreasing trend with the planting density. High density type varieties of spring maize should be selected to plant with reasonable planting density in the production of this area, so the results of water-saving and yield-increasing can be achieved significantly.