Abstract: 【Objective】 High temperature stress is one of the most critical meteorological disaster factors that restrict the high and stable yield of maize. This study explored the effect of tassel sizes on yield of different maize varieties under high temperature stress during pollination, so as to provide the theoretical basis and reference for stress-resistant cultivation and high temperature resistance breeding of maize. 【Method】This study was conducted by plot experiment in a greenhouse with two maize varieties as the experimental materials, Xundan 20 (XD20) and Nonghua 101 (NH101), from 2020 to 2021. The effect of tassel sizes on dry matter accumulation, distribution and yield of maize under high temperature stress during pollination was investigated by setting the tassel branch removal treatment at tasseling stage. 【Result】The results of two years showed that high temperature stress during pollination had little effect on tassel length, branch number, spikelet number and flowering dynamics of male and female. However, high temperature stress resulted in the decrease of dry matter accumulation capacity and distribution ratio to ear, which affected the growth and development of ear, resulting in the significant decrease of cob length and diameter, the significant decrease of grain number per ear, the decrease of proportion of matter accumulation to grain after anthesis, and the significant decrease of yield. Under high temperature stress, the decrease of ear length of NH101 was less than that of XD20, but the decrease of grain number per row, grain number per ear and the proportion of matter accumulation to grain after anthesis was higher than that of XD20, resulting in the decrease of yield of NH101 more than that of XD20, and the yield of XD20 and NH101 decreased by 12.32% and 25.00% respectively. XD20 is more resistant to heat than NH101. The tassel branch removal treatment significantly reduced the number of tassel branch and spikelet of XD20 and NH101 by 58.57%, 42.91% and 57.30%, 41.34%, respectively, but had little effect on the flowering dynamics of male and female. Under the two temperature conditions, the tassel branch removal treatment promoted the growth of ear, increased the grain number per ear, increased the proportion of matter accumulation to grain after anthesis, and thus increased the yield. Among them, the yield increase of XD20 under high temperature conditions was the largest. Compared with normal tassel branch treatment, tassel branch removal treatment increased the yield of XD20 and NH101 by 2.76% and 4.37% under normal temperature conditions, while increased by 12.47% and 5.75% under high temperature conditions, respectively. 【Conclusion】High temperature stress during pollination has little effect on the growth and development of tassel, but it caused irreversible damage to the growth and development of ear, reduced the number of grains per ear, limited the distribution of photosynthate to grains after anthesis, and significantly reduced the yield. Under high temperature conditions, properly reducing the number of branches in tassel can promoted the growth and development of ear, increased the number of grains per ear, promoted the accumulation of matter to grains after anthesis, and increased the yield. In addition, the yield increase of the large tassel-type variety XD20 was higher than that of the small tassel-type variety NH101.

Key words: maize, high temperature during pollination, tassel size, dry matter mass, grain yield