Maize is emerging as an important crop in Tamil Nadu for food, feed and industrial purposes. Maize grains are mostly used as a component of feed for animals. Large and small scale animal feed industries depend on maize production, as maize grain shares about 60% of the feed. The area under maize in Tamil Nadu during 2003-04 was 1.6 lakh ha with the production of 2.51 lakh tonnes. There has been a three fold increase in maize area when compared to 0.49 lakh ha. In 1996-97 and the production level has also been increased 2.5 times. About 69 per cent of the maize area (1.12 lakh ha) is under rainfed cultivation.

Currently, as per Tamil Nadu Broiler Coordination Committee (BCC), the estimated demand of maize for poultry feed industry alone is about one lakh ton per month or twelve lakh tonnes per year. Since the annual production is 2.5 lakh tonnes, there exists a demand gap of 8 – 10 lakh tonnes of maize grain. To increase the area under maize cultivation and to bridge the demand gap the farmers need to be educated on improved production technologies. Keeping this in view, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University introduced the Improved Production Technology in maize in TN-IAMWARM sub basins.

Seed Treatment	-	Treat with Trichoderma viride @ 4g / kg (or) Pseudomonas fluorescence @ 10g / kg of seeds Seed + Azophos (40 g/kg seed)
Plant Spacing	-	Sowing at 60 X 20 cm spacing
Manures / Fertilizer	-	Biocompost : 12.5 t/ha 150 : 75 : 75 kg NPK/ha Azophos : 4 kg/ha
Micro Nutrient Mixture	-	12.5 kg/ha of micronutrient mixture with enough dry sand to make a total quantity of 50 kg/ha and broadcast evenly after sowing not incorporating the micronutrient mixture to the soil
Micronutrients	-	25 kg ZnSO4 is recommended for deficient soils
Hybrids	-	COH (M) 5, Pioneer hybrid (30B07), M 900 Gold, Ankur Bhanu