Performance of crosses among French and Spanish maize populations across environments.

Heterotic patterns among European maize (Zea mays L.) populations are strongly affected by genotype x environment (GE) interactions and no single heterntic pattern has been identified so far that is not influenced by GE interaction. The objectives of this work were to study (i) the mean performance and stability of the heterotic patterns 'Humid Spain x Southern France' and 'Dry Spain x Humid Spain' and (ii) the influence of some environmental and genotypic covariates on G and E main effects and their interaction. We studied the GE interaction for grain yield in eight environments using Si