effects of planting methods on morpho-physiological traits, yield and yield components of forage corn (zea mays l.) cultivars in saline condition

in order to study the effects of planting pattern on yield and yield components in different cultivars of forage corn (zea mays l.), an experiment was conducted at saline conditions (ec=6.43 ds.m-1) of dasht-e-malhe, neyshabour during growing season of 2009-2010. nine treatments and two furrow planting and furrow bed planting as main plots and three cultivars (ksc 704, zp 644 and ns540) as sub plots as split plot based on rcbd (randomized complete block design) were evaluated with three replications. criteria such as plant and ear height, number of leaf.plant-1, number of row/ear, number of kernel.row-1, stem diameter, day to tasseling, day to anthesis, anthesis-silking interval (asi), ear diameter and length quality index, number of ear.plant-1, protein percentage and forage yield of corn were measured. the results showed that the significant differences between planting methods and corn cultivars for forage yield and most of measured traits. the highest forage yield (49.13 t.ha-1) was belonged to raised bed planting method and ksc 704 corn variety. superiority of raised bed planting than other methods can be related to its superiority in many of measured traits like plant height, ear no. plant, ear length and ear diameter of corn.