Sarah, welcome back to the war against weeds podcast. This is Sarah Lancaster, extension weed management specialist at Kansas State University. I am here this afternoon with the good doctor. Joseph Ikley, how are you, Joe?
I'm good. The groundhog said something about winter yesterday, and I'm here to say he's a liar. It'll be longer than whatever he proclaimed.
Yeah but that's because you live in the tundra. All right. So the real topic at hand today, besides a rodent from Pennsylvania, is to talk about short corn, and to talk about short corn we have with us. Erin Burns Howdy, Erin!
hi everyone. Thanks for having me.
And Dan Quinn,
hello. Thanks for having me as well.
This is going to be a great chat. And I think it's something that is, is probably in the mind of folks, as we you know, just look at at New techs that are coming for the future. So Dan, let's start with you. Do you want to tell the audience a little bit about what you do and where you're from?
Yeah. So I'm assistant professor of agronomy, and also the extension corn agronomist for Purdue University. Been at Purdue actually be four years this spring. But by way of Michigan, I've been, you know, I grew up in Michigan. I actually remember when Erin was hired, because I was in grad school up there, Michigan State. Two degrees at Michigan State and plant soils. Got my PhD in corn management and plant soil science down at Kentucky, and then landed in
Purdue. So I worked above the state, worked below the state, and then now we're in the middle of the state. So, but my I always say my role is all things and everything corn. So if it has to do with corn, I'm usually involved with it some way or somehow.
Yeah, that's awesome. Erin. How about you?
Hi, I'm Erin Burns, and you have a small world. We'll let you be a boilermaker for now, Dan, but Sparty at heart. I'm at Michigan State University. I'm a weed scientist, or Yeah, extension specialist in Weed Science, started in the summer of 2017 so it's been a few years now, and I mostly focused on weed control and corn forages and potatoes. So dabbled by feet in the short corn world, and excited to hear more about your perspectives.
So let's kind of go back to the beginning here. Dan, I think this is one that maybe you could take the lead on, yeah. What is short corn?
Yeah? So, you know, you know, literally, it's, it's, it's shorter corn, right? So it's really been developed as a, you know, through breeding processes for a long period of time. So they often refer to it as short stature. You know, a lot of the companies have, I appreciate their names, you know, some are, I think smart, smart corn, and, you know, reduced stature corn, but yeah, it's just really a shorter plant. Is where it comes in. You know, short corn is not new. It
actually came about. I forget, you know, how many years ago I know Stein seed, and, you know, there was, was kind of an effort in it, you know, quite a few years ago didn't really pan out. They had a lot of troubles with it. And then now they've, I think, with breeding technologies today, and the way they can breed, and better breeding technologies, I think it, you know, they've kind of reinvigorated that over a period
of time. But, yeah, it's, it's really just, you know, corn hybrid, very similar genetics in that corn hybrid, but just a reduced stature on that. You know, across our trials, it's usually about two feet shorter on average, and that can vary based on the hybrids, but, but, you know, when we talk short corn, it's, it's literally just a shorter plant, yeah,
so what do you call traditional stature corn? That's our issue is, what do we we always have problems. Now we call it short corn. That makes sense. So is it tall corn, or is there like a going rate to what we should be calling our traditional or,
yes, full stature. That's, that's the same question I get. You know, well, this is tall corn. Well, what? How do you know it's tall, right? What's the definition of tall corn, right? So, you know,
yeah, I'm having some memories of walking breeding plots the summer I interned for Pioneer and just seeing, right? Even just within breeding lines, there's difference between lines,
yeah, because even if you go back to, like, open pollinated varieties of corn and or even silage varieties of corn, right, they're they're much bigger and much taller. I. And then even comparing, you know, the typical, your normal corn hybrids, to them, they're shorter. And then now we're going going even shorter. So I was kind of, you know, related a little bit to wheat, you know, we kind of went, went through this, you know, in terms of shortening its stature and the
difference in heights of the variety. So they're starting to take it to corn a little bit. So
should we talk through, like, the advantages and maybe disadvantages of that reduce height?
Yeah, I can, you know, talk on my side, just from, you know, agronomic. I think, you know, probably the biggest piece, and that you'll hear is, is wind, wind tolerance. You know, the you look at, you know, derecho issues out in Iowa and Illinois. We, we actually had a short corn trial this year in southern Indiana that that got hit by the hurricane remnants out of Florida. And I have a my grad student went out, you know, farmer, farm manager calls so
you got down corn. It's like, well, let's, let's fly it. Let's get a UAV up there. And he could pinpoint every single plot he had with the tall corn versus the short corn to the line, the tall corn was down and the short run was still standing. So I think that's a really big piece of it, you know, the other piece of it from, you know, my side is access to get over, get over the crop, right? You think about fungicides. You think about late
season nitrogen applications as well. Corn is a pain to get over top of. It's a pain to spray at tassel when you're trying to get those fungicides. You also have that pain if you're relying on airplanes or helicopters. You know, getting it scheduled and getting it on, getting the coverage is a pain. So a lot of the farmers I work with and talk to about it, I would say their biggest interest is the access, you know, just hey, I can take my John Deer or case sprayer that I have and and spray my
corn with fungicide. I don't have to have a haggie come in that's hired, or a plane or some of these things. So I think that's, you know, those are two of the biggest, you know, reasons that that I've seen where the short stature corn comes in.
So this is a little maybe more academic, but what does it do for things like nutrient nitrogen, use efficiency, things like that. Yeah,
you know, we're, we're still pretty great, you know, pretty new in that area, but we've been doing quite a few nutrient management trials with it, and we're going to keep expanding on that. From the nitrogen side, everything that we have seen has been the nitrogen use is very similar. We haven't seen any indications that you need more or less nitrogen. With the corn, the nitrogen uptake seems to be
pretty similar. We have some indications that, you know, one thing we've seen with corn, just in general, with breeding over time, is that the plants take up nitrogen a little bit later, and we're starting we're seeing that even more so with the short stature corn. So you think about, you know, side dress or in season nitrogen applications, there may be more of a play there, because it uses and takes up nitrogen a little bit later
in the plant. But again, that we we don't really know yet, because we're still really early on testing a lot of these agronomic questions. We've kind of just started with, Hey, let's look at nitrogen rates. We have no indication from our data that optimum end rates need to change with with the short Stature corn, but we have seen kind of differences in the timing of an uptake and that may play into later season and application. So we have a study this year that we're looking at an application
timing. So we're and nitrogen is really the only nutrient we've really dove into yet with with this short stature corn too. So you think about phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, all these things we we just haven't, haven't gotten that far yet. But obviously job security, I guess, with with looking at every time, you know, from an agronomic side to like, like mine, every time you get this pretty dramatic change, and say, a corn hybrid, it's like, well, I guess we can go back and look at these. You
know, I would say simple questions, right? Okay, what are planning day? What's Eating rate, what's nitrogen rate, you know, we did some defoliation trials, you know. So there's a lot of things we can start looking at almost again with this hybrid as compared to the other hybrids.
And so, I guess Erin, one of those things to look at again, is weed management concerns, right, right?
And I think short, corn has an interesting implication. Because I was going to ask you, Dan, about if you've done work with seeding rates. So we haven't, you know, I think about like playing around with seeding rates in soybean that has a really large implication on weed competition, because we.
Think about weeds. They, you know, complete for water, nutrients and light and light's a huge one, and one that I think now we can start thinking about a little bit more about pros and cons of having shorter statured corn, but also being able to
increase the the seeding rate. So if you're able to increase seeding rates of corn, which we haven't, it's kind of one of been one of those principles, quote, unquote, that's been devised by someone, however long ago, and at least at the trials we've looked at really being able to push those seeding rates. And would that have long term benefits for weed competition, you know, on those ends. So Dan, I don't know what seeding rates Have you guys looked at? Yeah,
we've, we've gone so probably bulk of our work has been seed rates. We've kind of laying it on one that the short Stature actually probably needs to be at a higher seeding rate if you're going to manage it, just in terms of yield levels. We've, we've found in a lot of our trials, that, on average, needs to be about 20% higher, which, you know, average for tall corn for us, you know ballpark lot of times, 32,000 is
a ballpark number for a lot of our farmers. Short stature corn, you probably need to be 36 38,000 now that also, we've seen that It tolerates the high seeding rates really well. And then we've also looked at narrow rows. So we bring in that factor narrow rows, it does really well in narrow rows. And then you bring in narrow rows by seeding rates. We push it up to 50,000 and the yield actually keeps going up. So where other hybrids we haven't seen that, or even in 30 inch rows, we haven't seen
that. I think, you know, we've we're still trying to understand it. But I think there is potential that the seed rate, one maybe needs to be higher, but also can be higher and it can tolerate it better. Another thing, I think, with what weed control, aspect that we found with short stature corn is the leaf area. So the, you know, you always think, well, the corn plants shorter, so the biomass is lower. And it's actually not the case. A lot of times the biomass is the same. It just
kind of allocates as biomass a little bit differently. So we've seen like the leaves be wider, right? So you think about shading out in terms of weed control, but we're also concerned on the disease side, right, that impact air flow, but a lot of times the leaves are wider. So I think there's, you know, potential on the weed side, maybe where you could have the higher pops and have the wider leaves, where it really shades out. One of the those, those weeds, I think,
when I think about weeds, you know, with weeds with extended emergence patterns, such as, you know, I'm in Michigan, we have a lot of water hemp that's kind of our, our new, more troublesome weed that has the ability to germinate whenever it decides it wants to I can think about maybe Sarah and Joe. What are your what? What weeds Do you think in your areas with this maybe have some benefits on
water? Yeah, we, we have plenty of weeds, but the the extended emergence pattern when they're going to do what they want to do is waterhemp. We have plenty of Kochia problems, but that's more of an early season thing, not as big of a deal in corn.
Yeah. I mean, Palmer is my number one weed across the state, and everything that we have to deal with. But I guess the one that keeps coming to my mind is I've got some farmers, really, all over the eastern half of the state that have been asking questions about Hophornbeam copperleaf because it specifically comes up later in the season, and so it's hard
to get a herbicide application that it might work on. So as Dan was thinking about or talking about later nitrogen fertility, I was like, Can we sneak in a herbicide application somehow and try to help these guys? So or
Or Burcucumber, for folks further east, that one was Yeah, Burcucumber and Morning Glory of like two, especially vining weeds like so we, we did this study along with the University of Kentucky, and they had moringloring at their location, which was great, and we found really no difference in and we control across. So we had three different herbicide
timings, a pre only program and then an early post. So v1 v2 put everything on, and then your traditional two pass, and we found no differences, and we'd control across either the two short hybrids we looked at are the tall and then we had two
different seeding rates too. So, I mean, this is just one year's worth of data, but think all those kind of, you know, cool, always a more weed biology questions can be asked in this system that we haven't really played around with, at least in corn for a long time.
I was. Going to ask Erin, you know, the big question that I know a lot of the wheat scientists have asked is about, you know, a lot of the herbicide labels have height restrictions. I kind of have my answer based on what I've seen. But I'm also curious, you know, from a wheat science standpoint, you know, have you seen any, I guess, red flags or things that stood out to you that you know this, this herbicide, you you have to, you can't go over, say, 13 inch corn, will, you know, bring in
short stature corn to that piece. How does that impact it? So, just curious, your thoughts on it?
Yeah, we just had a discussion kind of similar that is either label language going to change, or just because you can get over it, should you spray a herbicide that late to giant weeds? The answers mostly should be no for long term
herbicide resistance management. So I think that's something as the system becomes more adopted and talking to growers about, why is that giant weed still there, and is your best option, you know, spraying it, because you now can get, can get in there, and then are we going to have to maybe change some labels or or things along those lines? But that's definitely a question we get a lot. Or people are, you know, seeing that opportunity. But one, should one do it or not?
So I haven't seen short corn in the feet, like, growth stages yet, right? Like, I've seen it nearly ready to harvest, but not early in the season. How does height at equivalent growth stages compare? Like, how is it at when do you know it's going to be short corn? Yeah, is it the same at V6 like, when does that start to show up?
So from my perspective, it actually you can't tell the difference until you get to about V 10 to V 12. So, you know, one of our, you know, I work, you know, Brian Young, here at Purdue, has done some short stature corn and work, and we couldn't actually tell the difference in the in the height between the two hybrids, until it got to be about V 10. So actually, you know, well past those, those
height limitations. So, yeah, it's, it's interesting that, you know, we, we kept waiting, okay, when are we going to see it? When are we going to see it? But it's not until that corn really gets into that, you know, really peak growth, V 10, V 12, and then you get into, you know, tassel, you can really see it, but actually, for a pretty long period of time, early in the season, you you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Short and the Tall corn.
Yeah, I'd agree. I think, like, the earliest we had kind of a stressful year, two years ago, like v8 was, like, you could, like, if you squint it, and maybe really tried hard. You could pick it out, but it is, it is a lot later, and then you can start really seeing, like, inner node length and how it just starts, like, stacking all these leaves, which is just crazy, because they, they did tell you the amount of biomass
should be the same. And I was like, How is this physically possible on a plant that's going to be so much shorter, and that's just because those leaves just keep, keep piling on.
Yes, the leaf numbers the same. It's just like they took a plant, just like you said, right, and scrunched it No.
So seems some conversations early on about ear height on these corn hybrids. Can you guys talk to that a little bit?
Yeah, yeah, I can ear height is, I would say, the biggest challenge for short stature corn and will be the biggest barrier to adoption from harvesting. We found in a lot of our work that kind of, if you look at where the ear attaches to the main stem. That ear shank attached to the main stem, that needs to be pretty much 24 inches and above. Now, if you look at it, where the ear tips down, you know, the ear, you know, dries down, tips down, needs to be above 1112, inches,
just from some of the equipment manufacturers. And you definitely can get below that, especially if you get dry, like, like Erin said, we had that instance. We had a hybrid that, you know, we were combining it. And it was a, even with our small combines, right, a nightmare. And I told the, you know, the seed folks, like, you're never going to get somebody with a 12 row head that, you know you're picking up rocks in your head, or you're going to lose them as a customer
for the rest of your life. So I think that's the biggest, you know, barrier to adoption. I was also argued that from a breeding side, that's what they're looking at the closest they've been, you know, pretty diligent on all this hybrid we know has poor ear height. We're going to get rid of it. We have this hybrid that has better your height, but, yeah, that's something we track in every single short stature corn trial we do, and it tends to be that 24 inch break point, but that's
in flat, black ground. And. And we have rainfall that's not on hill slopes and Sandy, you know, areas when it's dry and it's going to get worse. So, yeah, that's, that's a big concern with short stature corn, sure,
yeah, and on the weed side. So when we we measured your height too. So I should say this study that I I'm talking about was conducted here in East Lansing, then also at Purdue and Ohio State and Kentucky, so kind of across a wide area. And the only time we saw your hike it reduced was in our control plot. So zero weed control at all. So really stressful environments. And then those plants did set years like pretty, pretty darn short, like, we completely missed them with
our, our, our pot harvester. Um, so that would be a really cool question to see, like, where is that tipping point? Is it 80% weed control, 50% you know, if you had a really bad year and everything kind of got out on you, you know what? What are the confounding factors that would push that, push that bull kind of your your target.
And sometimes you have a foot or two of snow while you're trying to harvest corn, so you need the ear height to be a little
bit higher the Dakotans, yes.
But then you'd see the ears that are on the nice, fluffy white snow on top. So maybe somehow go back and actually props
ears up a little bit,
but so so the other kind of stature type question I had, so V 8v, 10, V 12 sound like environmental dependent when we might start seeing differences on height and stature, what about that year, or The leaf width that you talked about earlier, that sometimes seems like a little bit wider ear or watch not ear, wider leaf width. Is that detected early on? Is that also kind of a end of Season type of measurement we're detecting?
Yeah, we, you know, I likely say that we don't really know, I would so from our side, we know for sure at tassel right with the ear leaves and the leaves just below the ear, kind of the center canopy are wider. But again, that's back to that additional question. You know that would be an interesting question to see when that break point is. We haven't measured that from our data point. You know the hybrids, like I said before, they're really hard to tell the difference when they
were younger. By the time you get to tassel, you can really tell the difference. And it's also the time when I think what has a big piece with, like the leaf width is like when the leaves get stacked, like below the year and near the year. But, yeah, I don't, I don't know that's a that's a good question. I'm not sure what when that kind of break point is, but I know at tassel for sure, you can start telling the differences, but that's largely when we started looking at it.
Yeah, we tried to measure rate of canopy closure. So we took fish eye pictures. So taking a picture below, up into the sky to look at what how many leaves are over that, and we found really no difference in, like, the overall rate. But again, I'm sure there, I'm sure there is one. It's just how fine
tuned can you? Can you measure that? But we were looking at really, think, big overall, gross differences in canopy closure, like, you know, with these seeding rates or something, delay that so much so that maybe with like a residual herbicide, you're losing a week of of control, or something like that. So trying to more link it, link it on that side, don't actually, kind of mechanistically what's going on. Yeah.
So did you guys measure, like, light interception by the canopy or anything like that? Yeah,
we found nothing, which was, I mean, it's one of those that's like, cool, like you go in maybe thinking, because it's, I mean, it's just looks so different by the time, by the time it looks so different. A lot of, lot of things, at least we'd, science wise, have already, already occurred. So, yeah, we didn't, but once again, just kind of one year's worth of other stuff. So,
and that, that's been one of my overall questions, and we've kind of danced around a little bit already, but, you know, the whole canopy closure and we often talk about as corn being a canopy closure crop, but think all of us have probably been inside of a corn canopy, and despite being cut up, and if you're not wearing long sleeves, it's like, oh, there's some sunlight getting through. And if you're in waterhemp or Palmer country, oh, look for that little beam of sunlight is going
through. There's a water him, for a Palmer sitting there, not very tall, but going to seed. So that's I guess the hope for my end is like, well, maybe we can completely canopy that thing over, but maybe my pathologist will differ on that hope.
So, Erin, is there anything else that we need to think about? Well, from the OB management side in terms of implications, you kind of kind of spoiled the question. I guess you said, yeah, it's the same.
No. I mean, we were truly expecting it to be different. But I I think that's just because, like, when you see it later, there's so it's so it looks so different. But when I put my Weed Science hat on, we think about weed competition early in the season. That's going to have your biggest implication on you. And so far, you know, with these just base and we looked at like, pretty robust programs. So they were, like programs that should, like our pre program, had like, three
different sites of action with residuals. So like, you know, ones where we're actually, if you're designing a program that's going to be robust, they were really, really the same, regardless of, you know, when they were applied and how long that is, under one kind of fairly optimal year with precept that came nicely. And the, you know, residuals did their job and and stuff like that. So I think long term population
dynamics could be cool. If these, you know, if it is shaded for potentially longer, are we going to see differences in seed viability? Are we going to see differences in, maybe, you know, seed decay? I think there's lots of cool questions along those lines that, you know, we just don't have long enough data set to look at yet. But think herbicide resistance management lies. Think some of those biological things could could have some benefits long term.
So curiosity question, and I'm sure you've already thought about this and are trying to address it, if you haven't already, how's it change critical period of weed control,
right? I don't, yeah. I mean, that's, that's kind of the base I would love to do, like an old school weed addition removal timing to see if it does shift it longer. Does it really matter? You know, I think that'd be cool.
Like that's, you know, with being fairly as new it is, it is, right? There's still a lot of other questions, I think, you know. And also, an another interesting piece about short stature corn, right? Is, you know, we're only in really the first phase of short stature corn, which has been developed through long term breeding efforts. We haven't gotten to the biotech versions right that are coming from both Bayer and corteva. I know Bayer has been kind of the first to the market
with presion, and that's through conventional breeding. But then you bring in this biotech, you know, the biotech trait, one that you know both bear and corteva have, that are that's still probably two to three years out, that, you know, everything I've seen from that side, I haven't seen any of them, but I've, you know, you know, had discussions with them and reviewed some research from them that you know, it actually that, you know, short stature, the conventionally bred short
stature corn, the reduced stature is realized largely below the ear, where the inner nodes are stacked below the ear.
The biotech version is, you know, supposedly, that it's more spaced evenly throughout the plant, that the inner node reduction is, the inner node spacing reduction is, is more evenly spaced, which then you know, in terms of ear height placement and stuff like that, it could be a little bit more consistent, little bit higher I think, you know, the way they can breed that biotech trade and some of the traits, I think some
of the genetics will get better. Will get better. But again, that's, you know, then you bring in that one and, okay, what are the questions we need to look at that one too. So we're still at really the, really the beginning of of a lot of this.
So I guess along those lines, we should probably just talk a little bit about, like, availability, what's available, where, what kinds of hybrids?
Yeah, it's, it's pretty limited availability, at least from my, my side, you know, I don't know, like, you know, from Bayer side, you know, I think it was pretty limited commercial release in 2024 they they're, they're pretty limited on maturities that they have, on a seed that they have, you know, they kind of have their specific farmers that they work with. You
know, it's largely started in the high state. So Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, has been kind of that, that range those, you know, 116 day to 108 day hybrids is kind of there, where they've they've been a lot of 110 112 day hybrids. So it's been pretty limited. I think the they had eliminated commercial release in 2024 expect that to expand here. But again, a lot of it's still kind of known, you know, in terms of, you know, where they're at with certain maturities and where they plan
to go. So, you know, there's, there's people starting to look at it from the silent side as well, in terms of digestibility and quality residue. But I think it's just, it'll just take some time they kind of, you know, started with, you know, the big market share of the I states, and then kind of starting to move it, move it from there. And then, you know, the biotech trait, you know, that's still 234, years down the line. Corteva, it was moved more towards, they're just doing the
biotech trait. So they, they've kind of held off on, on, you know, they've, they're kind of had their approach where, you know, hey, we're going to wait, make sure we got some here with the biotech trait, and then go from there. So haven't been able to work with any of that yet. So that's still coming from both the company. So that's, you know, it's still pretty limited. But I, you know, you'd expect it to to slowly get get more and more, like across a lot of, you know, wider area,
yeah, because they considered Michigan kind of the North location for this. And I grew up in Minnesota and lived in North Dakota for a long time, so I would never consider Michigan that that far north. When I think about my own personal experiences, I think, yeah, that's a really good, good point on just maturities and availability are playing a huge role.
Yeah, they don't. I don't think they have any, you know, 9698 day, or even the last hybrids for the sort of statute form, but I'm sure they will eventually. But yeah,
my my rule of thumb is when we hear about something, add two years that gets us into our market,
but you can benefit from all of our trial and error, so you'll just look totally awesome by the time it makes it there,
exactly. I mean, from an agronomic perspective, that's amazing, but we have, we have the same weeds and the same issues. So just for for this discussion, yeah, that's great for other discussions, like, I'd like to have that a little bit
I think being kind of, I mean, I grew up in sooner. kind of the fringe acre for the Corn Belt, right? I grew up in Missouri. Now I'm in Kansas, and it's just, I think we have a lot more misses in our growing environments, especially as we go further west. So like, Erin, you were talking about how perfectly the rainfall was timed and how all the priests got activated. And so now I'm trying to put this in the field, in, you know, dry land corn in Oakley, Kansas. And I'm like,
yeah, that doesn't happen. And so I'm just wondering, like, how do you have any if you had a crystal ball, like, how would you think some of these weed management issues would change as we go into maybe less areas that have less yield potential for the corn crop? Does that make sense?
Yeah. I mean, I think there's less, let's Yeah, yield potential, or really, when we're I mean, the goal was with the putting on residuals in a post pass. So I think, thinking about how that might work in those areas, I always think about, you know, we still have rain then, so is it worth it? Or that may probably needs to be another, another treatment is, if you don't have a residual in the post, like, what? What what
is that going to do? And that's something we haven't, you know, really looked at, because I guess we have a gift of being able to to rely on those. So maybe some of the benefits wouldn't be seen as fast, or maybe, maybe they would. I don't That's a great question. I just wonder about
the time to canopy closure, right? Kind of how all that would play playing because it have to be a little slower, I would think,
yeah, yeah, that's what's cool, though. I mean, it's cool to have a conversation like this about weed control and corn, because for a while it's been pretty, not as flexible,
yeah, not a lot of variety. So what other questions did you have today? Joe?
No, they hit some of the key ones for me, but potential changes herbicide labels and and the old the underlying thing we didn't quite address is one of my perennial
arguments of it should always be crop stage, not height. But I realize there's some reasons why height is on the labels, but we're in greenhouse season now, so it's very top, in my mind, when discussed with new graduate students of wind spray stuff, when you can artificially inflate the height of weeds or plants in the greenhouse, but that's a different discussion for a different day, maybe. But so we kind of covered that. And as far as weed control is concerned, that early season
growth seems similar, at least as far as we know so far so. I'm good for weed control. Erin Dan, does brown silk still occur at the same time? Because that's when we get the late season weed control.
Yeah, a lot of you know from the agronomic side, outside of you know, probably the seeding rate, not much is different in terms of growth safe timing, and, you know, we haven't, we're still pretty new on this, you know, the disease side, you know, you know, we did a little bit with fungicide. It seemed pretty similar. You know, the nutrient nitrogen side, pretty similar. We did a huge defoliation undertaking, you know, and, you know, reevaluating that versus short
stature, or, you know, normal full stature corn. And it didn't differ, right? We didn't have any, you know, interactions between foliation timing or defoliation percentage. So, you know, outside of, probably the the seating rate piece, a lot of it, it's, you know, seems to be pretty similar in how it behaves, how it works, how it operates, how it responds to some of the stresses. So, but also it's, it's also something
that we don't have a lot of data on, too. So that's something that we just over time, we'll, we'll start to tease a lot of these out, but we just haven't gotten there
yet. Corn stand. And that reminded me You mentioned narrower row spacing. So what row spacings Have you looked at?
We just did 20 inch rows, 20s farmers and pockets here and there. Across Indiana with with 20 inch rows. So we just did 20 inch rows, but we went up to 50,000 and still we're seeing that yield increase. Now bring, I don't, I always tell the farmers over but I don't know what the seed is going to cost, right? So, like, you know that economical, but, well, it was interesting to see that potential. So you think about like Erin, right in Michigan, you know, there's some
20 twos with the sugar beet guys. Yeah, that's
what I was going to add. I know Manny saying, who's our agronomist working on corn here? Looked at fifteens and 20 twos, and we were all on 30s, because that's kind of our typical weed control one. But
yeah, it's, it was pretty impressive in how it could respond and tolerate the narrow rows and the high I mean in terms of a dense jungle canopy, right? 20 inch rows at 50,000 is about as dense as it gets. But everything I've heard like from breeding efforts, I mean, they kind of just, they want to keep it in 30 inch rows. That's where they do the breeding in 30 inch rows. But, you know, we've, we've seen some of the potential until the intros.
Did I did we forget to ask? Anything else, Dan or Erin, is there something you're dying to tell us about short stature corn that I forgot to ask?
I'm looking at my take home points. And then it was kind of hit it out. Yeah, I
think we hit all the main points and yeah, I would say there's still a lot of unanswered questions. That's why we do it right? That's why we do the research. So we'll figure it out as it goes
well. Thank you, Dan and Erin for talking with us today. Do you guys have any social media websites that you'd like to share with the listeners
you want to go first? Yeah, go ahead, Erin
I'm old school. Um, we don't have a whole heck of a lot, but if you Google MSU weeds, you'll get to our Weed Science website, and that's where we put everything. So all of our trial results, pictures, talks we give during the winter, and students posters and things like that. So just Google MSU leads, and you'll see you'll see it.
Yeah, my so we have a website, so you can google my name at Purdue and or the kernel, right? K, E, R, N, E, L, dot. Info. Also, that link will get there. There's also a longer Purdue link that'll that'll get you there. We post try to get more and more of our, you know, research books, and, you know, research trials on there. And then I have Twitter x, or whatever it's called nowadays, Purdue corn is my handle on there. So we try to think, we share, share a little bit, bits
and pieces in terms of what we're seeing out there. And then, you know, I'll plug our podcast to we have Purdue crop chat with Sean Castile at Purdue, him and myself have a podcast. So if you're curious about what's going on in Indiana, we do that more so in the growing season as well. But those are the main plugs that we have for where you can find stuff from us. Yeah,
excellent. Well, thanks again for joining us, Dan and Erin, and as always, thanks to the folks who listen. We will see you all again next time. Thanks for listening to the war against weeds podcast. We appreciate support from the north central Integrated Pest Management Center and the collaboration with the Crop Protection Network. At crop protection network.org you can find this podcast, other podcasts, and a variety of other pest management resources.