Maize is one of the most important cereals in the world after wheat and rice. Now-a-days, the improvement of maize production is hindered by conversion of agricultural lands into industrial and residential areas. One of the suggested solutions is the production of maize cultivars that can be incorporated in agroforestry systems and can be grown with tree plants such as Albizia. The success of the improvement of new maize cultivars suited to this Maize-Albizia system depends on the availability

more »

... f genetic variability. Research on the genetic diversity of maize inbred lines that is suited to the agroforestry system with Albizia were conducted in a real forests planted with Albizia tree plants that are around three years old in Cimalaka, Sumedang, West Java, Indonesia. The evaluation of inbred lines was laid on a split plot design with two replications. The main plot consisted of two cropping systems, namely; maize sole cropping system and Maize-Albizia agroforestry system. The subplots were having seventy five inbred lines of maize. The biometric characters included days to anthesis, days to silking, days to harvesting, plant height, length of nodes, plant diameter, chlorophyll content, leaf area index, ear length, ear diameter, number of rows, weight of 1000 seeds and ear weight per plant. Based on the analysis of the main components, in conditions maize sole cropping system, the results showed an Eigen value between 1.08-4.52 which contributes to 67.27% variability, whereas, in the condition Maize-Albizia cropping system, the Eigen value ranged from 1.16-5.37 which contributed to 71.85% variability. Cluster analysis of 75 maize genotypes showed a wide distribution obtaining nine clusters in the maize sole cropping system and five clusters in the Maize-Albizia cropping system. High genetic variability seen in both cropping system greatly supports the development of elite new cultivars of maize that can be utilized in agroforestry systems.