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Cafe. With record grain prices, many growers are reevaluating some of their hybrid management practices with the goal of capitalizing on early grain markets. The following are some factors to consider for optimizing corn performance.
Selecting a range of hybrid maturities can help minimize yield losses when there are periods of stress, such as drought and high temperatures, during the growing season. This practice can also buffer your operation from losses to certain diseases such as Gibberella ear rot and grey leaf spot. By using early to mid-season hybrids a grower can avoid late season disease problems to which full season hybrids may be exposed. A range of hybrid maturities also spreads out the harvest season which allows greater flexibility in scheduling harvest operations.
When managing a range of corn hybrid maturities, which maturity should you plant first? Field research in Ohio and other Corn Belt states generally indicates that earlier maturing hybrids lose less yield with delayed planting than later maturing hybrids. Planting full season hybrids first allows them to exploit the growing season more fully (by collecting more heat units or growing degree days) and achieve their maximum economic yields. Therefore, if your goal is TO MAXIMIZE OVERALL CORN YIELD, begin planting with the full season hybrids followed by the mid-maturity hybrids and finish with the earlier maturing hybrids.
If your major goal is TO MINIMIZE HEAT OR MOISTURE STRESS during pollination, then you may want to consider a different hybrid planting date strategy. Planting earlier maturing hybrids before later maturing hybrids spreads the pollination period over a greater number of calendar days. With this planting scheme, different maturing hybrids reach the pollination period on different dates. As a result, a relatively short, hot dry spell is less likely to interfere with kernel set. The "downside" to this approach is that your later maturing hybrids will likely pollinate during the hotter periods of late July and August which may reduce yield. Moreover the later planting of full season hybrids can result in substantially lower yields.
If your objective is TO CAPITALIZE ON EARLY GRAIN MARKETS, then include some short season hybrids earlier in your planting schedule. This arrangement will allow some harvest of corn late in August or early in September. Select short season hybrids with high yield potential to maximize premium market prices and reduce potential loss that may have been incurred by not using full season hybrids. Keep in mind that early maturity hybrids will generally be more susceptible to certain disease problems such as gray leaf spot and may be more prone to stalk rot and standability problems.
Return to the the Chat 'n Chew
Cafe.
The Corn Growers Guidebook , a WWW
resource for corn management systems in Indiana and the eastern CornBelt.
Purdue University Agronomy Extension
WWW Home Page.
Purdue Agronomy On-Line! ,
Purdue's Agronomy Department WWW Home Page.