Elementos de produção de milho doce em diferentes densidades populacionais.

The objective of the present study was to evaluate the population density effect upon yield components of sweet corn during two crop years. The experimental design used was the randomized complete blocks with four replications. The treatments were based on combination among sweet corn hybrids (Tropical Plus and RB-6324) and plant populations (40,000; 55,000; 70,000; 85,000 and 100,000 plants ha-1), in the factorial scheme 2 x 5, evaluated in two "Summer" crop years (2009 and 2010). The characteristics evaluated were number of rows per ear, number of grains per ear row, plant prolificacy and total husked ear yield, whose average values were submitted to the joint analysis of variance. In the year of 2009 for Tropical Plus and in the year of 2010 for RB-6324, the prolificacy decreased linearly until the maximum population of plants used, which presented values of 1.04 ear plant-1 and of 1.02 ear plant-1, respectively. A minimum value of prolificacy (1.08 ear plant-1) was observed for RB-6324 in 2009 with 92,935 plants ha-1. In 2009, the highest yields of husked ears for Tropical Plus (8.43 t ha-1) and for RB-6324 (9.88 t ha-1) were achieved with a density of 100,000 plants ha-1. On the other hand, in the second crop year, the yields increased quadratically from 51,848 plants ha-1 (7.78 t ha-1), for Tropical Plus, and from 57,648 plants ha-1 (9.32 t ha-1), for RB-6324, until the maximum population of plants evaluated, whereupon presented their respective maximum values of 12.04 t ha-1 and 12.31 t ha-1. In general, the increase in population was unfavorable to the prolificacy of plants, but did not impair the husked ear yield, for which it was noted better answers with a population of 100,000 plants ha-1, in both crop years and hybrids used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]