Author: Jerry Little
Planning Unit: Boyle County CES
Major Program: Grain Crops
Plan of Work: Management and Marketing
Outcome: Initial Outcome
The agriculture agent along with the grain specialist, Dr. Chad Lee were requested by a commercial seed corn dealer because of problems with a particular hybrid they were growing to consider putting in to their variety line up to sell the next year. The corn hybrid was missing ears on several plants in the field. We dug and looked at roots, cut stalks for examination, and we looked at healthy plants as well. Preliminary results showed that the plants missing ears had a fungus on them. We sent samples to the plant diagnostic lab in Lexington to confirm the disease. This particular hybrid had not been shown to have susceptibility to this disease before. We helped that farmer and their company identify the problem and update their hybrid information for growers the following season. Now that farmers can manage for that known problem, on 10,000 acres, they would improve the grain yield by 40 bushels per acre, at $3.00 per bushel that is a $1.2 million dollar increase in gross farm income.
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