Increased Temperature and Shortened Grain Filling Duration Due to Sowing Dates Significantly Affect Fatty Acids Composition of Corn (Zea mays indentata Sturt.)

Due to global climate change, environmental conditions change and cause alteration on the factors that affect the plants during their growth and development.  For this reason, it becomes important to determine the reactions of plants, which are evaluated in different ways in many areas and are a large source of raw materials, to these changing conditions. One of these plants is corn (Zea mays indentata Sturt.), which is used extensively in both human and animal nutrition. Therefore, besides the starch and protein content and quality of corn grain, oil content and the composition of fatty acids are important. This study was conducted to determine the effect of temperature parameters and grain filling duration, which varies depending on sowing dates, on the fatty acid composition of corn. Field experiments were conducted in the growing season of 2019 and 2020 in Hatay/Turkey ecological conditions. The experiment was designed as split plot on randomized complete block design with three replications. Three varieties of corn were cultivated in four sowing dates. The content of fatty acids was determined by chromatographic method. Variance analysis revealed that fatty acid composition was significantly affected by sowing dates and crop variety. It was determined that total fatty acid content decreased due to the increasing temperature by the delay in sowing dates.