Field crop production is of paramount importance, the fundamental basis of food production and the source of our livelihood. Maize is one of the world's most important crops, essential for both food and energy security. The research was carried out in Hungary, at the University of Debrecen's Látókép Experimental Site, on calcareous chernozem soil in a complex tillage experiment, set up in 1989 by Prof. Dr. János Nagy. The analysis of the examined years (2015–2023) was carried out in a similar way as in the research of Gombos and Nagy (2019, 2022, 2023, 2024), i.e. we examined the deviation of the total precipitation and mean annual temperature of the given year from the 30-year (1981–2010) site average. RStudio and repeated measures model and LSD post hoc test are used to analyse the maize yield data.
Of the nine years studied, 2015 was the year with the third lowest significant maize yield (7.94 t/ha). The subsequent year 2016 yielded the second highest significant maize yield of the studied period (11.39 t/ha), The 2017 yield (8.64 t/ha) was significantly lower than the preceding year, while 2018 was more favourable for maize (9.18 t/ha). The 2019 harvest produced the statistically third highest maize yield (9.42 t/ha) in the studied period. The yield of 2020 (9.24 t/ha) was not significantly different from that of 2018, but was statistically different from all other years. The yield of maize in the unfavourable year 2021 (7.05 t/ha) was statistically the second lowest in the studied period. Of the nine studied years, the most unfavourable year for maize was the record drought year of 2022, when a yield of 2.52 t/ha was observed. The following year, 2023, recorded the highest maize yield of the studied period, 11.97 t/ha. The greatest impact on maize yield was exerted by the crop year with 73.5%, followed by fertilisation with 24.7%. The effect of tillage was 1%, because the different base crops performed differently depending on the crop year, thus neutralising the effect.