DETERMINATION OF GRAIN YIELD, SOME YIELD AND QUALITY TRAITS OF PROMISING HYBRID POPCORN GENOTYPES

The popcorn (Zea ways evertor Slur!) is consumed for snack food and its market has been continuously growing in Turkey. Therefore the breeding of new cultivars adapted to local target environments should be started. The experiments were conducted according to Complete Block Design in Samsun province in Turket. Grain yield, tasseling time, plant height, grain moisture at harvest, percentage of unpopped kernels and popping volume were determined for 18 new hybrid genotypes and 4 commercial popcorn cultivars in 2006, 2007 and 2008 years. Significant variations were found for all the traits of genotypes. Based on the means, the grain yields of genotypes ranged from 3535 to 5399 kg had, and popping volume varied from 38.2 to 46.5 cm(3) g(-1). The results indicated that, high yielding, TCM-05-01, TCM-05-02, TCM-05-03, TCM-05-04, TCM-05-05, TCM-05-06, TCM-05-09, TCM-05-10, and TCM-05-12 genotypes with high yielding were selected for yield trial in multiple environments.