Nwaosu S. C. and Onuche P.
Determination of maturity date and group classification of forty nine (49) varieties of Barley Crop were classified out using the experimental data collected from lake Chad, Research Institute in Maiduguri after the 2011cropping season. The purpose was to group the varieties into early, normal and late maturity varieties so as to assist plant breeders carry out further work on varieties evaluations. Data were collected on 50% heading date, yield and plant height as three major characteristics in Crop varieties needed in breeding work. Lognormal density function was used in the parametric Survival analysis since it has the least Anderson - Darling (adj) value after the goodness of fit test. One way analysis variance (ANOVA) was employed to test for the group homogeneity as the groups were determined using the first, second and third quartile values. The results show that the median heading date was 63 ± 0.96 days with an average yield of 0.77kg/plot. The first quartile (early maturity date) have an average 58 ±0.93 days with the highest average yield of 1.077kg/plot, and the third quartile (late maturity date) have an average1.075 days of 66 ± with an average yield of 0.58kg/plot. The authors recommend the selection of varieties from the first group that exhibited short maturity date highest average yield for further breeding work and an extension of this work using germination date, panicle count and weight of 1000 grains
