Maize production in Hungary has a significant climate risk, which is definitely manifested in the variation of the average yield from year to year. The main limitation of yield is the lack of precipitation, but the negative effect of high temperature is also a

contributing factor.

This research focused on the correlation between the average yield of the nonfertilised H480 SC hybrid, which has a 5-year-long data series (2013–2017) within the long-term experiment performed at Debrecen-Látókép, and the weather of the growing season, including precipitation and temperature. Our weather database contains the obtained data (including mean temperature, temperature anomalies and precipitation sum) in monthly and 10-day-period breakdown and we examined the growing season of maize based on these data. Due to the short data series, we aimed for establishing qualitative correlations. Based on the obtained findings, it can be concluded that 1) permanent and sometimes extremely warm weather results in very low yield under average (and not extremely distributed) rainfall conditions; 2) in the case of average and balanced weather circumstances, summer drought significantly reduces yield, even after very abundant precipitation in the winter; 3) the very dry (basically rain-free) weather in June does not reduce average yield below the mean value; 4)the significant amount of rainfall in the silking – grain filling period can only partially compensate for the negative impacts of the previous drought, while the favourable weather in July and August is not enough on its own to produce average yield that is significantly higher than the mean yield.

Keywords: maize, weather, precipitation,temperature, average yield