Status and prospects of maize research in Nepal

Abstract

Food and nutritional securities are the major threats coupled with declining factor productivity and climate change effects in Nepal. Maize being the principal food crops of the majority of the hill people and source of animal feed for ever growing livestock industries in Terai of Nepal. Despite the many efforts made to increase the maize productivity in the country, the results are not much encouraging. Many of the maize based technologies developed and recommended for the farmers to date are not fully adopted. Therefore, problem is either on technology development or on dissemination or on both. Considering the above facts, some of the innovative and modern approaches of plant breeding and crop management technologies to increase the maize yield need to be developed and disseminated. There is a need for location-specific maize production technologies, especially for lowland winter maize, marginal upland maize production system, and resource poor farmers. Research efforts can be targeted to address both yield potential and on-farm yields by reducing the impacts of abiotic and biotic constraints. Therefore, in order to streamline the future direction of maize research in Nepal, an attempt has been made in this article to highlight the present status and future prospects with few key pathways.

Profitability and resource use efficiency of maize seed production in Palpa district of Nepal

“…There is a growing practice of using hybrid seed for maize production to meet the demand of poultry feed industry, which is annually increasing at 11 percent (IFPRI, 2010;KC et al, 2015). However, there is very limited amount of hybrid seed available in Nepal which is unable to meet the growing demand of maize seed.…”

Effects of storage structures and moisture contents on seed quality attributes of quality protein maize

“…Maize (Zea mays L.) is the second most important staple food crop after rice and a major feed crop in Nepal (KC et al, 2015). Despite the implementation of various seed related projects and active involvement of public and private institutions; still the country has been suffering from unavailability of quality seeds.…”

Comparative study of impact of Azotobacter and Trichoderma with other fertilizers on maize growth

“…In the context of Nepal, the importance of maize increase with altitude, eventually standing as a staple crop in northern part of the country (KC et al, 2015). In the context of world, 58% of maize is utilized in animal feed, 16% in human food and 26% in bioethanol production (HLPE, 2013), whereas, study shows that 60%, 25% and 3% of grain were used for animal feed, food and seed respectively in the hilly district of Nepal and rest is sold to the traders (Timsina et al, 2016).…”