An agronomist says he’s seeing an unusual phenomenon in corn fields this harvest season.
Bob Berkovich with Pioneer in Wisconsin says the drought stress caused some plants to stall and then continue with grain fill after some late moisture arrived, and that’s led to some unusual dry down problems. “The corn is actually drier in the lower, wetter, better parts of the field where normally, the corn would be wetter. When they get on the hilltops, sidehills, or areas of lighter soil types, that struggled more with the drought this summer, because that corn was delayed, it’s staying a little bit wetter.”
Berkovich says the resiliency of modern corn genetics along with agronomic practices like side dressing and fungicide application helped get better than expected yields from a very dry crop.
