Seven Wonders of Corn
October 30, 2008
You’ve undoubtedly heard of the Seven Wonders of the World. But what about the Seven Wonders of Your Corn? Fred Below, Professor of Plant Physiology at University of Illinois, developed this list as a way to value the influences of a corn crop on a yearly basis.
The list of wonders has been determined and measured from 10 years of research at the University. The values were originally set as bushels/acre but I've converted them to a percentage of total yield due to the differences in yield potential across the country.
Keep in mind that each wonder listed generally has some influence on the remaining wonders after it.
The biggest wonder is the weather. Corn yield can vary over 26% due to good or bad weather. Unfortunately weather can't be controlled very well, yet it has a considerable influence on the other wonders.
The second wonder is nitrogen, which affects corn yield by around 26%.
The third wonder of corn yield is hybrid selection. The advancements and improvements in hybrid research make hybrids an important factor to yield and will become more important with the introduction of drought tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency. Differences between hybrids' yields typically vary more than 19% overall.
The fourth wonder is previous crop. Research indicates that corn on corn exhibits nearly a 10% yield penalty.
Plant populations are often too low and can affect corn yield by 7%. Population ranks as the fifth wonder.
The last two wonders are tillage and chemicals, which influence corn yields 5% and 4% respectively.
Although this is a super simplified list, it hopefully provides an insight to the value of production factors, which may help with management decisions.
Click on the title to download the full text of Professor Below’s Seven Wonders of Corn.