2013 WISCONSIN CORN HYBRID PERFORMANCE TRIALS: Grain - Silage - Specialty - Organic

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The UW Hybrid Trial website

Every year, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences conduct a corn evaluation program in cooperation with the Wisconsin Crop Improvement Association. The purpose of this program is to provide unbiased performance comparisons of hybrid seed corn for both grain and silage available in Wisconsin.
In 2013, grain and silage performance trials were planted at 14 locations in four production zones: the southern, south central, north central, and northern zones. Both seed companies and university researchers submitted hybrids.

Table of Contents
Introduction Companies entering hybrids Hybrid index Transgenic technologies Seed treatments Temperature and Precipitation Trial management Hybrid history		Text Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6 Table 25
Grain
Southern Zone   Arlington, Janesville, Lancaster	Early Maturity Trial: 105 day or earlier Late Maturity Trial: later than 105 day	Table 7 Table 8
South Central Zone   Fond du Lac, Galesville, Hancock (irrigated)	Early Maturity Trial: 100 day or earlier Late Maturity Trial: later than 100 day	Table 9 Table 10
North Central Zone   Chippewa Falls, Marshfield, Seymour, Valders	Early Maturity Trial: 90 day or earlier Late Maturity Trial: later than 90 day	Table 11 Table 12
Northern Zone    Spooner (three sites), Coleman		Table 13
Silage
Southern Zone   Arlington and Lancaster	Early Maturity Trial: 110 day or earlier Late Maturity Trial: later than 110 day	Table 14 Table 15 Figure 2
South Central Zone   Fond du Lac and Galesville	Early Maturity Trial: 106 day or earlier Late Maturity Trial: later than 104 day	Table 16 Table 17 Figure 3
North Central Zone   Chippewa Falls, Marshfield, Valders	Early Maturity Trial: 99 day or earlier Late Maturity Trial: later than 99 day	Table 18 Table 19 Figure 4
Northern Zone   Spooner (two sites), Coleman		Table 20 Figure 5
Organic
Southern Zone    Arlington, Janesville, Lancaster		Table 21
North Central Zone    Chippewa Falls, Marshfield, Seymour, Valders		Table 22
Specialty - Dryland and Conventional
Central Zone - Dryland    Chippewa Falls, Hancock Deficit Irrigation,    Hancock Full Irrigation		Table 23
Southern Zone - Conventional    Arlington, Janesville, Lancaster		Table 24

OBTAINING DATA ELECTRONICALLY

This report is available in Microsoft Excel and Acrobat PDF formats at the Wisconsin Corn Agronomy website: http://corn.agronomy.wisc.edu. 

The most current version of Wisconsin Corn Hybrid Performance Trials (A3653) is also available to download as a PDF or purchase as a printed booklet at the UW Extension Learning Store: http://learningstore.uwex.edu. 

For more information on the Wisconsin Crop Improvement Association, visit: http://wcia.wisc.edu. 

Copyright © 2013 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System doing business as the division of Cooperative Extension of the University of Wisconsin-Extension. All rights reserved. Send copyright inquiries to: Cooperative Extension Publishing, 432 N. Lake St., Rm. 227, Madison, WI 53706, pubs@uwex.edu.

This publication is available from your county UW-Extension office (yourcountyextensionoffice.org), from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Department of Agronomy, 1575 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, phone: (608) 262-1390, or from Cooperative Extension Publishing. To order, call toll-free: 1-877-947-7827 (WIS-PUBS) or visit our website: learningstore.uwex.edu.

Evaluating On-Farm Test Plots

Wisconsin farmers are in the thick of corn harvest. With the delayed frost, some are finishing up silage harvest, while others have begun grain harvest. Early yield indications are good in many areas that had reasonable spring planting dates. Average yields of hybrids gown in the early- and late-trials at Galesville were 221 and 234 bu/A. However, the trials at Marshfield we had to abandon due to June flooding, and the trials at Chippewa Falls will be quite variable due to drought.

This is also the time of year when on-farm strip plots are evaluated. Field variability alone can easily account for differences of 10 to 50 bushels per acre. Be extremely wary of strip plots that are not replicated, or only have "check" or "tester" hybrids inserted between every 5 to 10 hybrids. The best test plots are replicated (with all hybrids replicated at least three times).

Don't put much stock in results from ONE LOCATION AND ONE YEAR, even if the trial is well run and reliable. This is especially important in years with tremendous variability in growing conditions. Years differ and the results from other locations may more closely match your conditions next year. Use data and observations from university trials, local demonstration plots, and then your own on-farm trials to look for consistent trends.

A few suggestions on how to evaluate research test plots:

1. Walk into plots and check plant populations. Hybrids with large ears or two ears per plant may have thin stands.
2. Scout for pest problems. Hybrid differences for pest resistance and tolerance should be monitored and noted all season, but will be most apparent in the fall. Counting dropped ears is a good way to measure hybrid ear retention and tolerance to European corn borers.
3. Check for goose-necked stalks. This is often root pruning caused by corn rootworms. Hybrids differ in their ability to regrow pruned roots.
4. Find out if the seed treatments (seed applied fungicides and insecticides) applied varied among hybrids planted, e.g. were the hybrids treated with the same seed applied insecticide at the same rate? Differences in treatments may affect final stand and injury caused by insects and diseases.
5. Differences in standability will not show up until later in the season and/or until after a wind storm. Pinch or split the lower stalk to see whether the stalk pith is beginning to rot.
6. Break ears in two to check relative kernel development of different hybrids. Hybrids that look most healthy and green may be more immature than others. Don't confuse good late season plant health ("stay green") with late maturity.
7. Visual observation of ear-tip fill, ear length, number of kernel rows, and kernel depth, etc. don't tell you much about actual yield potential. Hybrid differences are common for tip kernel abortion ("tip dieback" or "tip-back") and "zipper ears" (missing kernel rows). Even if corn ear tips are not filled completely, due to poor pollination or kernel abortion, yield potential may not be affected significantly, if at all, because the numbers of kernels per row may still be above normal.
8. Be careful with test plots consisting predominately of one company's hybrids. Odds are stacked in their favor!

Can Yield Maps Predict Future Yields?

To maximize field productivity and profitability, growers are increasingly using site-specific management rather than whole field management practices. Our objective is to describe spatial and temporal yield variability to predict grain yield of specific land cells (parcels of land). The goal is to determine if yield maps allow accurate delineation of management zones for prescription applications.

Grain yield data for twenty-six years of continuous corn (CC), continuous soybean (SS), and corn-soybean rotations (CS) in no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) systems were used in the analysis.

Spatial variability is the variation of land cells within a field for a given year (i.e. yield map) and in this example averaged + 12 bu/A (+5 to +24 bu/A). Temporal variability is the variability of a land cell over time and in this example averaged + 42 bu/A (+40 to +43 bu/A).

Within corn systems, spatial variability was +11 to +15 bu/A and temporal variability was +42 to +44 bu/A. Within soybean systems, spatial variability was +4 to +5 bu/A, while temporal variability was +9 to +13 bu/A.

Each land cell was ranked within its rotation x tillage combination; therefore, to incorporate the CS rotation effect, two years are required for one cycle. Our analysis found that land cells are significantly different for grain yield and could be ranked within a tillage x rotation treatment. CC-NT required 2 years (one cycle) before a significant yield difference was first found between land cells, while corn in CS-NT required 20 years (10 cycles). High- and low-yielding land cells were not consistently identified until 16-20 years (8-10 cycles) had passed, with the exception of CC-CT which only required 4 years (2 cycles).

For specific land cells, high corn yield did not always predict high soybean yield and vice-versa. For example, land cell 102 was the lowest yielding cell for corn, while yielding statistically the same as the highest land cell for soybean.

In this uniform field, consistent land cell grain yield patterns were observed for tillage x rotation treatments. These patterns did not consistently predict grain yield between corn and soybean. Since spatial variation is lower than temporal variation, prescription predictions remain challenging.

For a complete report including tables click here.