EC IA | ehoff - 8/25/2023 16:24
Boron, moly, k p zn s, If you think about the 2 stages of corn plant growth it starts to make sense. The first stage is vegetative the second being reproductive. Think of why a corn plant doesnt desicate its lower leaves during water deficit periods prior to pollination. Corn slows its growth during water deficit periods prior to pollination but it maintains the plants nutrient status if the nutrients are available in the right amounts. Thus a properly fertilized corn plant will have the proper nutrient content to make pollination happen even though the plant is shorter and under some stress;
The tip-back I'm seeing is not because the kernels didn't pollinate. This year, we had more second ears pollinate than I've ever seen, if the "silk shake" method of checking pollination is accurate. We were out of subsoil moisture and didn't get more than a couple inches of rain in early July, so the second ears never filled and the main ear tipped back substantially. I don't know how you can theorize that better nutrition would have helped in this case. Especially considering the correlation between rainfall and tissue samples that we've observed...
I understand that nutrient deficiency prior to pollination will limit the nutrients available for remobilization, and maybe that's the point you're getting to. But to say that tip back is "more related to nutrition" this year doesn't make much sense for most of the corn belt, in my opinion. |
Tip Back
