Maize is one of the main cereal crops in Malawi and plays an important role in farmers' lives and on-farm income. However, yield is low with drought and low soil fertility among the principal factors influencing maize production. The development of drought tolerant cultivars represents an important method for reducing the effect of drought stress on maize production. Since 1997, Malawi has worked hard to develop maize varieties with drought tolerance during the flowering period with funding from the CIMMYT SADLF project. Four open pollinated populations were improved for tolerance to drought at Chitala using S1 recurrent selection scheme. S1 lines were selected under normal and artificial drought conditions and were recombined, forming improved populations. The four populations, together with several OPVs and hybrids were evaluated from 1998/99 season to compare yield potential and other agronomic characteristics under artificial and non-stress conditions in summer and winter. Several varieties were selected together with the improved populations for drought tolerance and ZM 621, ZM 521 and ZM 421 were released in 2001. From the population improvement programme, Matindiri C1 had 10-16% genetic yield advantage over the original population. These cultivars have shown good performance and production stability in low rainfall areas, showing the potential for improving the performance of maize under conditions of water stress through plant breeding. These varieties were also put under multilocation testing using the Mother and Baby concept as well as running 600 demonstrations. In future, our drought programme will get increased attention with objectives of (1) adapting high yielding germplasm to stress conditions (2) to develop inbred lines tolerant to drought and low fertility (3) identify hybrids/OPVs with broad adaptation to the highly variable growing conditions in Malawi.

English

0410|AGRIS 0401|AL-Maize Program

Juan Carlos Mendieta

CIMMYT Publications Collection