Selecting corn hybrids for performance

[Jim Meade / Iowa City]

An Ohio State corn guy gave a talk at the ISU seminar on how to pick the best corn.  Good talk.

1.  Choose maturity ranges for your area.  Black layer should hit about 1-2 weeks before a killing frost.  However, it may be necessary to pick an earlier corn if dry down is an issue.

2.  Pick a corn that has done well across a number of locations.

3.  Look for good standabilitiy

4.  Pick for resistance to stalk rots, foliar diseases and ear rots

5.  Double check the performance data in state, company and county replicated plots.

[infire]

Had a dealer tell me yesterday that planting 111 day corn next to 106 was a good idea, because if it was really dry at polination the silks on the 106 might dry up before total polination & then if we got a rain the 106 would shoot new silks & possibly gain some polination form the 111 when it polinates. He says over time the window that a corn plant releases pollen has shortened & the tassle is smaller thus having less total availiable making it harder to get total polination. Anybody know if a corn plant really does re-shoot silks like that? Just curious.