Maize occupies the third place among the cultivated plants, which means according to the date obtained from FAO, over 159 millions of hectares cultivated land generating a production of over 1300000 thousand tons. 5% of the world’s total maize production is industrially processed, this percentage also including the popcorn. The surface cultivated with maize in Romania was of 2345.5 thousands ha in 2009 and the average yield obtained was of 3406 kg/ha, respectively a total production of 7987.7 thousand tons.        Popcorn belongs to the Zea mays L. species, everta Sturt Bailey convariety (sin, microsperma Köern. The varieties of this convariety differ in grain and rachis colour and in having a jaw-like prolongation or not. The most spread variety is oryzoides, with reddisch grains, white colour and white rachis. The biologic material studied consisted in the varieties Turda, Jebel, Bărăgan, Kesckemeti and Little jeweles. The specialized literature does not present data regarding popcorn fertilization, which is what determined us to conduct the present study on a cambic chernozem, wet-phreatic, with poor salinization under 100 cm, situated in the Timiş Plain region. The paper presents the crop results for the five varieties, cultivated with four fertilization levels.  In the researched region the yields varied between 1057 kg/ha for Kesckemeti variety, the variant fertilized with N 0 P 60 K 60 and 4092 kg/ha for Turda variety fertilized with N 225 P 60 K 60 .          The nitrogen  fertilizers applied on a base of P 60 K 60 increased the average yield of the 5 varieties with 22% (N 75 ) – 33% (N 150 ) şi 47% (N 225 ). The increase in grains for 1 kg was of .,81 kg  for the variant fertilized with N 75 , of 4.9 kg for the variant fertilized with N 150 and of 4.7 kg for the variant fertilized with N 225 . The paper presents the results of the experiments conducted on the influence of fertilization on the number of plants with 1 and 2 corn cobs, on the percentage of sterile plants and on the evolution of the mass of 1000 grains and of the hectolitre mass.

Zea mays everta Sturt, fertilization

Presentation: oral