All I Want For Christmas Is…….
R.L. (Bob) Nielsen ,
Agronomy Department ,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
47907-1150
Internet address: rnielsen@purdue.edu
With only about 200 days left before Christmas, some of the guys down at
the Chat 'n Chew Café figure it is high time to begin working on
their Christmas wishlists relative to growing corn. Given the extremes in
the 1998 growing season to date, plus the fact that such weather extremes
appear to be the norm these days, plus the fact that farmers do not have
any control over the weather, many of those gathered around the corner
table are thinking that maybe Kris Kringle should relay their desires for
genetic improvement on to the plant breeders and genetic engineers who
spend countless time and money in developing improved hybrids of corn.
I have assembled a few of their requests and reproduce them here with
their permission (with some minor editorial changes). If the biotechnology
giants of this world would concentrate on fulfilling a few of their
appeals, variability in corn yields from year to year would be greatly
curtailed and farmers' incomes would be much less influenced by the
vagaries of Mother Nature.
Christmas Requests From the Chat 'n Chew Café
- Dear Santa,
What I would really like for Christmas is a hybrid that would germinate
easily and uniformly at soil temperatures as low as 40 degrees F so that
I can plant anytime the soil is fit in late March or April and not have
to worry about poor or uneven emergence.
- Dear Santa,
Please give me a hybrid that withstands "wet feet" without
stunting its root development and overall growth so that I could farm
those "wet holes" with less anxiety.
- Dear Santa,
All I want for Christmas is a hybrid that tolerates drought stress
anytime during the growing season so I could farm those sand dunes and
clay knobs with less trepidation.
- Dear Santa,
My corn has suffered from floppy corn syndrome in recent years, so I
would like a corn hybrid whose roots truly grow towards soil moisture OR
whose root tips simply do not dry out as easily when exposed to dry and
hot soils.
- Dear Santa,
Those guys at Purdue tell me that I lose all my nitrate nitrogen in my "wet
holes" because of some microbial process call "denitrification"
that results in the evolution of nitrogen gas, so what I would like is a
corn hybrid that can capture all that N gas before it escapes into thin
air.
- Dear Santa,
My crop consultant keeps hounding me about all of the soil compaction
that I have created in my fields. Please give me a hybrid with a root
system that is capable of penetrating these hard pans so that I can
continue to till my wet ground without feeling guilty.
- Dear Santa,
I would like a corn hybrid with built-in antifreeze that would resist
both late spring and early fall frosts PLUS (currently) lethal air
temperatures down to about 15 degrees F so that I could farm those
low-lying muck soils in northern Indiana with less uncertainty.
- Dear Santa,
My request has been made by many farmers for years, but please give me
hybrid that will fix its own nitrogen just like soybean does so that I
can reduce my costs and headaches of applying nitrogen fertilizer to the
crop.
- Dear Santa,
Give me a hybrid that is capable of regenerating damaged leaf tissue so
that I can stop worrying about hail damage.
- Dear Santa,
What I want for Christmas is a corn hybrid that would germinate
uniformly under all possible soil moisture conditions so that I could
plant at a fixed seeding depth without worrying about uneven germination
and emergence due to variable soil moisture throughout the seed zone.
- Dear Santa,
Please drop a hybrid under my Christmas tree that has its own built-in
resistance to all of the soilborne seedling blight organisms so that I
do not have to fret about whether the captan and metalaxyl hang around
long enough to protect the seedlings.
Editorial Comment
I am not sure how early Santa's elves begin delivering his mail, but
hopefully some of these farmers' requests for what would be truly dramatic
genetic improvements over today's corn hybrids will be heard and acted
upon by seed companies and public research institutions. All of the new
and coming specialty grain traits may be great and wonderful, but it seems
to me that all too often the farmers' bottom lines are more influenced by
the susceptibility of corn to the various weather, pest, soil and nutrient
problems identified in the Christmas letters above.
For other information about corn, take a look at
the Corn Growers Guidebook on the World Wide Web at
http://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/
End of Document