There 9 s research in a bag of hybrid seed corn
•LANCASTER - Agricultural
(.-'“research and the results of that
research —are vital to the success
of every farmer in American,
although most farmers aren’t
familiar with the - “behind-the
product” activities.
There’s more money, manpower
and effort behind an improved
product when it hits the market
than most would guess. For
example, the total effort behind the
search for better hybrid seed is
large and complex.
At last count, there were hun
dreds of seed companies
marketing hybrids and varieties of
various crops. The American Seed
Trade Association has well over
700 companies registered as
members. Not all companies
conduct research, but the effort is'
still impressively large.
The largest effort comes from
, DeKalb Agßesearch, Inc., which
tfbhiploys hundreds of people, who
iJPe involved in one way or.another
Xm the search for better hybrids. -
The number of people on the
’ DeKalb payroll last year in the
com research department, alone,
was nearly 1000.
According to Charles Krull, vice
president of com research at
DeKalb, employee numbers - are
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Call us for BOBCAT SALES or rental
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S S y -4500 Paxton St. • Harrisburg, PA (717) 554-3031 5 5
m~ S Route3o9(Drums)•Hazleton,PA (717)788-11275 5
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| CLARK MELROE DIVISION
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not the only means of measuring
research efforts.
. “There are three basic ways to
measure a research effort. There’s
the number of people, the amount
of money and then, there is the
effort itself or what a company
is actually doing to search for
better hybrids.”
The com research department
conducts actual breeding work and
testing at 15 major locations across
the country, but the marketing,
production and foundation seed
departments, not to mention
farmers, are all running additional
research and test plots that
number into the thousands.
To give you an idea of size, try
these numbers on. The firm
planted 'nearly 135,000 nursery
rows of test com last year.
Regardless of how long those rows
are, if they were m 30-inch rows
those nursery rows would cover a
field 64Lmiles wide. Nearly two
thirds of these rows are pollinated
by hand, plant by plant.
In addition to that effort, they
operate over 200,000 replicated
research plots from which detailed
notes on percentage of root
lodging, stalk lodging, yield, silk
date, ear drop, tassel date and
moisture are taken.
Our
are ready to put you
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in total, that’s more than one
third of a million plots of com that
researchers at just one seed
company are studying. Selection
procedures are so intense and the
business is so competitive thattmly
about one of every one thousand
hybrid looked at each year is good
enough to be advanced to even the
next phase of testing.
It can take up to 12 years for
farmers to have seed available to
them from the time the original
crosses are made. Seed companies
can take steps to speed up that
process by two to three years—like
taking the seed to Hawaii or
Flonda, where breeders can utilize
long growing seasons to produce
two crops instead of one.
DeKalb, for instance, has two of
these locations—one in Hawaii and
one in Florida, where yet an ad
ditional 25,000 nursery rows are
studied.
As large as these efforts seem,
the story is not yet complete. At
least a handful of the major
companies and nearly all major
land grant colleges have a com
plete set of complementary
specialists.
Krull says, “We operate all of
these programs as do a few other
companies. We have pathology,
CLARK
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Wis-
physiology, entomology, germ
plasm resources, nutrition and
data processing.”
While the company’s total
research efforts are aimed at
providing farmer’s with higher
yielding hybnds, many of the
contributions came from com
plementary programs. Improved
resistance to disease, insect and
drought are some of these con
tributions.
For instance, hybrids with
drought tolerance are well on their
way to being marketed, a direct
contribution of the physiology
program.
A new race of northern com leaf
blight was discovered and
resistance found before it did any
significant damage; part of a
pathologists job. The germplasm
resources group conducts a world
wide search for new and different
germplasm and then screens for
the better ones. Nutritionists are
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RD 2, Cochranville, Penna. 19330
PHONE: Office 215-869-8201 215-869-8006
215-932-3307 Paul 215-444-5170
Located on Rt. 41 Between Avondale and Cochranville
Warehouse at Russellville.
incaster Farming, Saturday, May 2,1981-05
searching for protein quantity,
amino acid balance and other
factors figure into nutritional
quality.
Entomologists strive to keep
pests away from com fields by
providing more bred-m resistance.
And naturally, with all this to
accomplish, you need a computer
or two and a scattering of
statisticians that’s where data
processing gets into the act.
Proven techniques? A good
program? Well, it seems to be
working. Com yields have in
creased from 25 bushels per acre
back in the ‘3os to 109 bushels in
1979 an impressive track record
considering about half of that
increase can be attributed to
genetics or research.
That’s a good indication
agricultural research is paying off
where it’s needed most down on
the farm.