author(s)
Hammad Hussain, Fazli Raziq, Imran Khan, Bismillah Shah, Muhammad Altaf, Attaullah, Waseem Ullah, Ahmad Naeem, Muhammad Adnan, Khwaja Junaid, Syed Rizwan Ali Shah, Mazhar Iqbal

abstract
Three local maizerncultivars, namely Jalal, Azam and Iqbal were inoculated with Bipolarisrnmaydis at 6, 10, 14 leaf stages and tasseling stages. Cultivars werernallotted to the main plots and growth stages to the subplots, each consistingrnof six rows, 3m long and 75cm apart. The central two rows of each sub-plot wererninoculated with 10⁴ conidia/ml concentration of the pathogens duringrnsummer 2013 at New Developmental Farm of The University of Agriculture,rnPeshawar. Overall, Jalal registered the lowest disease severity (1.53) on a 0-5rnscale while Iqbal was observed to have the highest disease severity (2.40).rnAmong the growth stages inoculation at the 6-leaf stage resulted in the highestrndisease severity (2.78) and lowest yield (5328.2kg/ha) and yield componentsrnwhile inoculation at the tasseling stage was found to be the least effective inrnterms of disease severity (1.44) and reduction in yield and yield components.rnSimilarly, a significant interaction between the cultivars and growth stagesrnwas observed (P ≤ 0.05).