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Hot dry weather triggering premature corn death
Hot, dry weather across the Midwest in recent weeks is causing premature corn death in some areas.
Mike Toohill is an agronomist with Diversified Crop Insurance Services in Bloomington, Illinois. He tells Brownfield it is a widespread problem in the northern half of Illinois and Iowa.
“Because we had so many spring rains this year, soils are very hard and tight and root penetration isn’t as much as we’d like to see. You add in all of the hot days we have encountered lately and all of the stress, we have a lot of plant death.”
He says yield and quality impacts depends on how far along the corn is. If the corn made it to 50% milk line before death, Purdue University shows farmers will only lose about 12% of yield and Toohill says it still has good quality potential.
“If you have corn that has died when it is just starting to dent, in that case you can have up to 40% yield loss, very low test wights and very low grain quality.”
Toohill says cooler temperatures and rain will be needed soon to prevent more of the crop from dying prematurely.
