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| If you wish to have the potential to add yield with the same plant population go with a true flex ear. In great growing conditions they use the conditions to produce longer, thicker and more dense ears.
Most hybrids today have a semi-flex style ears. This can be said in different ways, such as medium flex, good flex etc. But in my opinion there is either a fixed, semi-flex or a true flex ear. If you can think back to early hybrid corns, they had huge ears because they were flex ears planted at 16k to 18k population. Given advanced genetics and traits now, we can push the yields by pushing the populations up, giving us more healthy plants per acres, but smaller ears.
In my opinion, hybrid ear flex is the number one concern when going for high yields. Usually a true flex ear are considered 'race horse hybrids' meant to be put on best ground for highest potential. Contrarily, it's the number one factor in finding a hybrid that works on your poor ground. There are two basic schools of thought for this. Some people argue you should put a fixed ear and plant it thicker on your poor ground. This gives you the advantage of more plants with consistent(usually smaller) ears. Thus on an average year, the more plants equals more yield per acre. The flip side is to argue that a flex ear works better on poor ground because you can plant it at a lesser population. This saves you seed costs and could still allow for the same yield in a an average year, because the ear will adjust to a lesser population.
Ear flex is a management decision that depends on desired outcomes and risks. Fixed ears usually produce steady and predictable outcomes whereas a flex ear has more highs and low potential from what I've seen and experienced.
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Seed Corn Traits - Ear Flex question ?
