Page 10—Com Talk, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 24,1998
HIGH OIL CORN
GETS MIXED REVIEWS
IN 1997
During the past several
years, high oil com hybrids or
blends have been introduced by
the seed industry and marketed
on a limited basis in our region.
The potential of these of
added value corns is that they
can be utilized by our poultry
and livestock industry and
could provide premium oppor
tunities for com producers as
well.
Basically three factors influ
ence the adoption of specialty
com as these high oils: markets,
price, and agronomic perfor
mance. During 1997, we saw
some activity in the develop
ment of local markets for high
oil com in addition to on farm
feeding. That was a positive.
We also saw some premiums
offered for high oil com, depen
dent on the oil content, in the 30
to 35 cents/bushel range. That
too was a positive.
The difficulty was in the area
of agronomic performance.
There we saw some problems.
These problems generally were
centered cm mediocre pollina
tion in some, but not all, fields.
The high oil corns on the mark
et now are either hybrids or
blends that utilize TOPCROSS
technology. Historically, high
oil hybrids have been difficult
to develop that yielded compe
titively with normal hybrids.
A breeding method called
TOPCROSS was developed by
Dupont recently to introduce
grain quality traits into com
without causing the yield drag.
In the TOPCROSS technology,
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a high yielding hybrid is con
vened to a male sterile version
(one that produces no viable
pollen) and then this seed is
blended with a high oil pollina
tor line. About 8-10 percent of
the seed in the bag is the high oil
pollinator line and these plants
eventually are responsible for
pollinating the entire field. The
pollen from these plants causes
the grain on all of the plants to
have a larger than normal germ
and an oil content of 7-7.5 per
cent compared to 3.5 percent
for normal com.
It may seem that relying on 8
percent of the plants for polli
nation is risky, but in most
cases it is not, since the pollina
tor lines are heavy pollen pro
ducers and they shed pollen
over a longer period than nor
mal com hybrids. The technol
ogy has been growing rapidly
with over a million acres of
TOPCROSS com grown in
1997 in the U.S. and more acres
expected in 1998.
The TOPCROSS blends are
available from Dupont to many
seed companies. Most have at
least some experimental lines
and some have had commercial
products on the market for sev
eral years. Recently, Dupont
acquired part of Pioneer, so
now Pioneer has access to this
technology as well. Perfor
mance studies are more diffi
cult to conduct with the TOP
CROSS blends since you need
about 40 rows of isolation from
normal com. This makes it dif
ficult to conduct many tests in
our region where normal com is
everywhere and even more dif
ficult to replicate TOPCROSS
and normal com comparisons.
HYTTEST
Studies by my colleagues in
Ohio and Wisconsin have
shown that TOPCROSS blends
perform comparable to normal
com, anywhere from about 10
percent lower to about 5 per
cent better. Industry data from
Pennsylvania seemed to gener
ally corroborate these results.
Based on this information, it
appears if we can get the TOP
CROSS hybrids to yield simi
larly to the normal hybrids and
get about a 10 percent pre
mium, we should be able to
come out ahead. This year, per
formance suffered since we
encountered more pollination
problems in some TOPCROSS
fields than usual. Yields in
some of these fields were off
more like 30 percent compared
to normal. These fields showed
signs of poorer pollination than
normal com in adjacent fields,
although in most of the situa
tions I saw the normal com did
not have great pollination
either. The poor pollination
appeared to be a result of severe
drought stress during July and
rootworm beetle feeding on
silks and tassels. In general, the
pollinator plants were shorter
than the grain parent plants and
appeared tolerate the drought
and rootworm damage less than
the grain parent hybrid. Pollen
shed may have been reduced or
delayed more from the pollina
tor plants under these extreme
conditions. Similar problems
were repotted in Ohio this year.
We should also note that there
were some good TOPCROSS
fields throughout the state
where pollination was good and
yield appeared to be compar
able to normal com.
(Turn to Pago 11)
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