These aren’t your daddy’s corn hybrids.
If you think modern corn hybrids are leaps and bounds more productive than what you were planting 15 or years ago, you’re right. But thinking so and knowing so (and how) are two different things, and for that you need research.
Tony Vyn, of Purdue University, has looked at the nitrogen use efficiency of corn hybrids pre- and post-1990 to get a handle on how and why modern lines are so much better at using nitrogen. The good news is post-1990 lines produce more grain per pound of nitrogen taken up than their older relatives. What’s more WHEN theses hybrids take up N has shifted significantly — to after flowering.
In this edition of Ontario’s Agronomy Geeks podcast, your host Bernard Tobin asks Vyn about what we now understand about modern corn hybrids, what it means to the future of nitrogen application rates and timing, and — and this is a big one — how do we get to maximum internal efficiency of corn?
Related: Hear more from Tony Vyn on corn production here
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