With the world’s population growing at a rapid pace, ensuring global food security has emerged as the greatest concern as a result of climate change. Abiotic stresses such as water scarcity and heat stress are becoming increasingly major challenges to be addressed in order to enhance maize production.

Drip irrigation and rainfeeding (control) experiments were carried out in 2023 at the Látókép Crop Production Experimental Site of the University of Debrecen (Hungary). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of the tested maize hybrid in terms of yield and the accumulation of dry matter and a few essential nutrients (N, P and K) over the growing season in both irrigated and non-irrigated conditions. For this reason, four plants were collected from each treatment at four phenological stages (V12, R1, R4 and R6) of maize growth. Plant dry matter was measured, nutrient concentrations were obtained from the dried biomass and grain yield was determined.

Based on the performed statistical analysis, the influence of irrigation was not significant regarding plant dry matter, nitrogen and potassium accumulation at different phenological stages. However, only one significant variation (p<0.01) in phosphorus uptake was identified between the treatments at V12. Conversely, drip irrigation significantly enhanced maize grain yield, producing 13.636 t/ha, i.e., 2.3 tons, surpassing the control treatment.

This study reveals the high yield potential of drip-irrigated maize and its promising solution to ensure the sustainability and resilience of the global food supply, confronting climate change.