Maize (Zea mays L.) is a vital cereal crop in maize based cropping system in Punjab, Pakistan (Abbas et al., 2019). Maize is broadly utilized for making food items, feeding purpose and bio-energy production. Maize is grown during both spring and autumn growing seasons in Pakistan (Ahmed and Ahmad, 2019; Fatima et al., 2018; Abbas et al., 2017; Ahmad et al., 2016). After wheat and rice crop, maize crop is ranked 3rd position and mostly (95%), it is grown in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces in Pakistan (Ahmad et al., 2019; Ahmed et al., 2019a, 2017; Hussain et al., 2019; Tariq et al., 2019). Total growing area was almost 1.32. Average grain yield was 4.39-ton ha-1 and total grain yield was 5.98 million ton (Anonymous, 2017). In Pakistan, average grain yield of spring and autumn maize is very low as compared to advance countries due to poor crop management practices especially un optimum sowing date and poor selection of hybrids (Abbas et al., 2019; Shahzad and Ahmad, 2019; Sher et al., 2019; Naz et al., 2019; Ahmed et al., 2019b, 2018; Hussain et al., 2018; Liaqat et al., 2018; Moatshe et al., 2015).

Planting date and hybrid maturity are two major strategies used worldwide for crop adaptation and mitigation to manage for unfavorable growing conditions (Abbas et al., 2019; Tian et al., 2019; Mason et al., 2018; Bonelli et al., 2016; Dong et al., 2012; Li et al., 2010). Optimum sowing date is very important crop management decision to obtain highest achievable grain yield during spring and autumn season (Totin and Pepo, 2018; Srivastava et al., 2016; Florio et al., 2014). Weather conditions like temperature, rainfall and solar radiations are changed with changing of sowing dates (Ijaz et al., 2019a, b; Younis et al., 2019; Zahoor et al., 2019; Abdala et al., 2018; Komainda et al., 2015). Weather conditions played a significant role on growth and development of maize crop (Ge et al., 2016;