A field experiment was conducted during 1986 Kharif season under rainied conditions to study the effect of plant population and hydrophilic polymer on the performance of a short duration maize composite Renuka (G-25). Maize grown with 1,11,111 plants per ha gave 25.56 and 5.66 per cent increase in grain yield over low (55,555) and medium (74,050) plant populations, respectively. However, grain yields obtained with high population (55.26 q/ha) and medium population (52.30 q/ha) were on par and sigoificantly supgerior to that of low population (44.01 q/ha). These results suggest that fairly high yields of maize could be obtained with medium plant population. Application of hydrophilic polymer (Jalshakti) did not produce significant increase in grain yield of rainfed maize in black soil.