Someone last summer was wondering what an open pollinated corn could yield under modern field conditions. If anyone is still wondering, here's one comparison:

Corn was planted Mid-May, no-tilled following burndown. Bicep II Mag and Balance Flexx were applied with the planter, field was cultivated and ridged.

Fertility was 100 lbs N as pre-plant AA, 100 lbs AMS topdressed in June, 40 lbs N through the pivot in July.

Planting rate in the plots was 25K.  Harvest populations ranged from 21K-25K for the hybrids, 18K-24K for the open pollinated. 

14.5' of row was hand harvested in early November, ears stored in sacks in an unheated storage shed until a week ago.

Ears shelled with a crank sheller, grain weighed and tested for moisture and test weight.  Used 1.4%/point to shrink to 15% moisture.

Two plots sampled twice equals four samples, averaged:


Yield Moisture TW
AbbeHill Open Pollinated:    137 15.4     59.5

Pioneer 32T16:                    246 17.6 59.7

Pioneer 1498HR:                250 17.6 59.2 



It's not an exact way to measure, but it gives an idea without putting in field sized plots.  I was fairly generous with harvesting the OP corn, I picked any ear still attached to a stalk even though some of them were leaning over pretty bad and probably would not have been picked up by a combine head.


 

(AHOP.jpg)

(32T162.jpg)

(1498HR.jpg)

AHOP.jpg (151KB - 1055 downloads)

32T162.jpg (154KB - 1140 downloads)

1498HR.jpg (156KB - 1083 downloads)