Sulphur and Chlorine Effects on Yield and Quality in Fresh Corn

Aims: To investigate sulphur (S) and chlorine (Cl) effects on fresh ear yield, yield components and quality in fresh corn.

Study Design: A 3 × 1 × 3 field experiment was set up in RCBD, with three replications. This was integrated with laboratory experiments.

Place and Duration of Study: San Fen Chang Experiment Station, and Crop Genetics and Breeding laboratory of Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding, China, between March 2016 and May 2017.

Methodology: Treatments comprised Control (S0, Cl0), S (38 kg ha-1) and Cl (84 kg ha-1); and three hybrids included TDN21 (sweet), JKN2000 (waxy) and JKN928 (sweet and waxy). Total fresh ear yield was calculated from the measured components; quality evaluation focused on taste parameters (relative sweetness, aroma, texture, peel thickness and viscosity), grain nutritional composition (crude protein, starch, fat and lysine contents) and external appearance of ears; whilst Barium sulphur turbidity method was used to assess grain sulphur content.

Results: Significant (p≤0.05) total fresh ear yield ha-1 increases of 18.12%, 17.53% and 6.58% in TDN21, JKN2000 and JKN928 cultivars, respectively, were realized as S influenced some yield components (average fresh ear diameter, ear length and ear weight) evaluated. However, Cl effect was insignificant. Both S and Cl significantly (p≤0.05) improved the kernel taste by increasing relative sweetness and flavour in all cultivars. Additionally, sulphur significantly increased crude protein (CP) in TDN21, whilst chlorine decreased CP by 2.78% to 6.05% in all cultivars. Sulphur significantly increased crude starch by 4.31% and 7.56% in TDN21 and JKN2000, respectively, whereas Cl significantly increased crude fat by 3.43%, 15.17% and 6.60% in cultivars 1, 2 and 3, respectively. Furthermore, sulphur enhanced harvested ears` external appearance in TDN21 and JKN2000 cultivars, contributing to quality improvement.

Conclusion: Sulphur has profound effects on enhancing both yield and quality, whilst chlorine is prominent on quality in fresh corn.