Page 16— Com Talk, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, February 10, 1996
‘Wave Of The Future’
ANDY ANDREWS
Lancaster Farming Staff
CARLISLE (Cumberland
Co.) Say goodbye to the
days of growing your com,
hauling it to the mill, and get
ting the best market price.
Say hello to the days of
forward-pricing with insurance
and using yield monitors to see
exactly how well your fields
produced. '
In the near future, you may
welcome sensors on the com
bine to determine grain com
position on-the-go, including
protein and starch content, and
using allocation devices to
separate specific com that is
under contract for highly spe
cific products.
That was the message that
225 com, hay, and soybean pro
ducers took home from them
during the com production seg
ment of the annual Pennsylva
nia Crops Conference at the
Embers Inn last week in
Carlisle.
It was a message shared by
Dr. Peter Coaldrake, of Pion
eer’s com breeding station
based in Champaign, 111., who
spoke at the conference about
the wave of the future in
“designer crops.’’
“Com is not just com, it’s
not a grain we raise and just
sell,’’ said Coaldrake. Now,
com is viewed by many proces
sors as a renewable resource
with a wide variety of products
that can be gleaned from it to
make products in demand by
consumers today.
There are varieties of
“com” that can be grown and
shipped for further processing,
encompassing white, yellow,
yellow waxy, white waxy, blue,
high lysine, high oil, high fruc
tose in short, com that will
meet further processing
demands.
And processors will look
more specifically at what is
needed to grow a highly specif
ic com for a specific product.
The uses of com evolve as
consumers demand more spe
cialty products. For instance,
according to Coaldrake, a new
niche maiket for specific com
products is Mexican food. One
company even labeled com for
distribution on July 4 red
com, white com, and blue.
“You have to think of com
as no longer just com. ’ ’ said the
researcher. Com has become a
raw material to produce more
specific products.
While the markets for com
evolve, researchers such as
Pioneer are meeting demands
for seed products that provide
increases in harvestable yield,
reducing crop losses, impro
ving management costs, and
creating more value-added and
new uses for com.
A part of that is creating
“designer crops’’ that maxim
ize overall yield and are more
pesticide- and disease
resistant This includes more
feed energy intensive and more
waste-product manageable var-
Designer Corn
ieties of com.
Producers will see “a gene
tic solution to the com root
woorm problem and crops tol
erant to insects early in the next
century,” according to
Coaldrake.
Crop research now focuses
on herbicide-resistant varieties
that are environmentally safe.
The first generation of herbi
cide resistance evolved in the
1980 s, and the second genera
tion in the late ’9os will provide
more options for disease and
pest resistance. The ‘ ‘third gen
eration” of herbicide-resistant
com, in the year 2000 and bey
ond, will allow growers to man
ipulate yields, maturity, and
com nutrient composition.
Com could end up replacing
“factories” that use a non
renewable resource, such as
seashells, for high-valued pro
tein, with a renewable resource
such as com to extract the same
product.
Also, com that readily uses
nitrogen and phosphorous from
fields is on the horizon.
Some feed com is being
developed that would reduce
the phosphorous content of
manure. The variety lowers the
bound phosphorous in the com,
making it more available to the
animal. Research at Pioneer is
under way to use microbial
methods in the gut of the rumin
ant animal to make more effec
tive use of the phosphorous in
the grain.
For Pioneer, it is more effec
tive to examine the whole pic
ture of using feed, from the
management of the variety to
the animal that will be using it.
rather than woik on simply
higher yields for varieties of
com.
The demand, in the future,
may not necessarily be for the
cheapest com, but what the
grower gives the most value for
that product that can be made
from it. according to
Coaldrake.
Also, com for human con
sumption will evolve as con
sumers demand more “conve
nient foods, healthier food,
more environmentaly friendly
foods, and ethic foods with
more diversity,” he said.
Coaldrake presented several
slides on further processors of
com products, including a
Frito-Lay plant in Illinois and a
tortilla plant in Texas. The use
of a consistent product that is
readily processed under strict
guidelines will become the
norm for further processing for
consumer products.
Technology will drive
advances in com products.
Monitors on harvest equipment
will show what the com com
position and quality are. Even
grain elevators will have grain
composition evaluation equip
ment —which could determine
price paid to the seller.
Grain testing will involve
more robotics, replacing people
in levels of complexity.
Corn varieties will evolve to
provide a producer with a pro
duct that has higher metaboliz
able energy, that is more energy
dense with higher digestability,
that will have lower levels of
mycotoxins, with an improved
amino acid balance and an
increased protein content.
Pioneer research has exa
mined varieties that look at a
particular product, such as
starch, and how easily extract
able it is. They can now mea
sure a trait such as starch
extractabiiity "cheaply and
repeatably" said Coaldrake.
The dry millers process, in
the future, will look at ways to
take the endosperm and break it
into pieces that can be used by
certain processors. Kelloggs,
for example, for cereal process
ing, requires these pieces to be
exact, with a higher percentable
of hard endospeim, a high test
weight, low levels of stress
cracks in the kernel, low levels
of crushed and broken kernels,
and com that is free of toxins.
And they want that
consistently.
The masa processors, for tor
tillas and other products,
require com that has a higher
test weight, intact kemals, with
an easily removable pericarp.
The clear white or yellow com
Side Dress Nitrogen Source
Efficiency For Corn
On A Silt Loam Soil
The source, not just the
quantity, of nitrogen at side
dress application can make a
difference in com yields. Nit
rogen can be lost from the soil
by volatilization, denitrifica
tion, leaching, and, of course,
plant uptake. N source, soil
type, and soil conditions can
interact and affect each of these
losses. This study was
designed to test the effective
ness of several commonly
available nitrogen sources on a
silt loam soil.
A uniform area 180 feet by
ISO feet was selected in a large
commercial com field on a
Matapeake silt loam soil. The
field had been in wheat fol
lowed by double crop soybeans
the previous year and was
planted to DeKalb 623 com at
a population of 27,600 plants
per acre the current year. Start
er fertilizer was applied at a
rate of 41-41-13.6 N-P-K at
planting. The experiment was
laid out as a randomized com
plete block with 11 treatments
and 3 replications in plots
(D®3M Mai N®W§
PENNSYLVANIA MASTER CORN GROWERS ASSOC.. INC.
Dr. Peter Coaldrake, of Pioneer’s corn breeding sta
tion based In Champaign, 111., spoke at the crops con
ference about the wave of the future In “designer
crops.’’
must be free of toxins and have different than what you know
rapid moisture uptake. today,” Coaldrake said. The
In the future, markets will be product will be geared for the
small and segmented and pro- “ultimate consumer” and
cessors will be going to more reflect those specific demands,
specific markets for a highly This will require more vertical
defined product. integration between the grower
“Farms are going to very and supplier.
which measured 15 feet x 45
feet. N treatments were applied
to each row middle by hand on
June 14, 1995.
Sidedress N rate was 80#
N/A except for one ammonium
nitrate treatment which had
20# N/A and the check plot
which received no additional
N. Plots were harvested by
hand on September 20, 1995.
Table 1. Fertilizer treatments and grain yield.
N-Source
30 % UAN with 8-0-0-9 @ 24# S/A
30% UAN with 0.105% NBPT
Urea (46-0-0) @ 83 #/A + Ammonium Sulfite (21-0-0-24) @ 200#/A 166.13 AB
30% UAN
Ammonium Nitrate (34-0-0) 112 #/A + Ammonium Sulfate @ 200 #/A 163.67 AB
Ammonium Nitrite (34-0-0) 174 #/A + Ammonium Sulfate @ 100 #/A 161.17 AB
Ammonium Nitrate (34-0-0) @ 80# N/A 156.87 AB
Urea (46-0-0) with 0.14% NBPT ISS.S7 AB
Urea <46-0-0) 154.10 AB
Ammonium Nitrate (34-0-0) @ 20# N/A 149.80 B
Check-Starter N-P-K only 115.10 C
LSD (0.05) 18.31
*Yiekto followed by the same letter are not significantly different.
Plot yields were statistically wa ter holding capacities are
analyzed by analysis of var- efficient at using a variety of N
lance which determined that sources with little chance of
there were stotistical differ- unwanted nutrient loss. Silt
ences at the 0.05 probability loam soils also have the ability
level. Means were separated by ( 0 supply a large amount of
calculating a Least Signifi- residual Nas evidenced by
cance Difference at the 0.05 yields of neatly 170 bu/A with
level. The check plot with no only 121 #N/A from fertilizer.
additional N produced the low
est yield which was signific
antly different from all other
yields indicating that more
than 41 #/A starter N was
necessary. The next lowest
yeild resulted from the ammo
nium nitrate treatment of just
20# N/A. This was not, howev
er, signficantly different from
the next 8 treatments which
had 80# N/A applied at side
dressing. There was a positive
but not significant yield
increase when NBPT (a nitrifi
cation inhibitor) was used with
urea over urea alone. There
were also yield increases when
ammonium nitrate and ammo
nium sulfate were applied with
48 and 24# S/A over plain
ammonium nitrate with no
additional S. The top two
yields were produced with
30% UAN solution with nearly
a 3 bushel yield advantage seen
when 24# S/A is included.
Overall silt loam soils with
their excellent nutrient and
Yield (bu/A)
169.83 A*
167.87 AB
165.33 AB