Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | Just reviewed the knowledge about the effect of high temperatures on pollination. It appears that at temperatures consistently high 90's interferes with the daily silk growth need to provide for successful pollination. Plus high temperatures can kill the pollen before it can attach & grow a pollen tube. The last Crop Progress shows that the major corn belt states were in the 60% silking range up from roughly 20-30% last week. This means that most of the corn belt is right in the critical pollination period.
It's going to be interesting to see what producers there say when they start reporting the results of their silk shake tests next week. I know here last year during our own drought there was clear evidence of pollination failure despite that temperatures were never anywheres close to those being reported in the corn belt now.
Personally, I suspect that we won't be able to point to any one week or any one event that will determine this year's yield. Even those producers who don't experience a outright failure will lose a percentage with ear length, pollination success, and eventually grain wt. that will all add up to lower yield. |
overnight low temperatures
