What are the odds that each seed in your seed corn bag is there instead of another seed of a different genetic makeup? Based on what plant breeders report about the potential combinations they screen, especially today with the help of artificial intelligence, the number is astronomical. Then, how great is the miracle that allows each tiny seed to produce an ear with 700 to 750 kernels? In that one bag of 80,000 kernels rests the potential to grow over 600 bushels of corn at 250 bushels per acre.

And it all starts with one kernel. Here’s insight into how each kernel begins as a concept in a plant breeder’s mind, and then winds its way through testing, trait development, planting, detasseling, harvesting and processing, before ending up in the bag.

This journey was captured thanks to the cooperation of Darin Lucas, Beck’s manager of production at Atlanta, Ind., and other Beck’s employees.

Here are the five major steps that must occur before seed corn is ready for delivery to your farm. Techniques and processes may vary from company to company, but the overall path is similar.

1. Breeding: Develop new hybrids. Beck’s accesses germplasm from different sources within the industry. The company also uses its own plant breeders to develop unique hybrids.

Related:Take a look inside a corn breeding nursery

Steve Swarm, a Beck’s plant breeder who specializes in recognizing inbreds and developing hybrids that can withstand various stresses, noted during a field day program that the search for the next hybrid begins by knowing the makeup of genetics in the female and male gene pools available to each plant breeder.

Then it becomes a matter of making crosses until finding the one with the most potential. Only after extensive testing, the hybrid may move on in the program. If necessary, traits are added. It’s a multiple-year process between discovery as a candidate for a hybrid and making the commercial lineup.

2. Planting: Flex with each season. “We got off to a good start. Then it turned wet this spring,” Lucas recalls. “It made it more challenging, but we were able to get all of our inbreds planted in reasonably good shape.”

Lucas knows the makeup and quirks of each male and female parent behind each hybrid like an avid reader knows each page of a favorite book. Some can be planted in four-female-two-male row combinations, all at the same time. Some require planting the male later, and some even require planting a male row, and then planting a second male next to the existing male row several days later, so that pollen will be available longer to pollinate the female.

Related:How automation makes detasseling more accurate

“The harder the inbreds are to manage, often the better the hybrid,” Lucas says. “That’s why it can be worth spending extra time.”

3. Detasseling: Get each step right. Gone are the days when high school students trudged through mud and heat to detassel female inbreds. Today, the process is more mechanized. First, a high-dollar Oxbo machine equipped with what resembles lawn mower blades passes over the field. Several days later, an Oxbo detasseling unit, equipped with pairs of small tires over each row female row to grab and pull tassels, does the actual detasseling.

“The first pass helps even corn up and makes the pass with the detasseling unit more effective,” Lucas says. The detasseling unit doesn’t get every tassel. The final step requires a pass by H-2A laborers to pull tassels missed by the machine, ensuring that seed produced will be high quality.

After pollination, male rows are destroyed with a unique self-propelled machine equipped with rollers and blades. They’re spaced to only contact male rows.

“Another key is watching for insects, especially aphids,” Lucas says. “They were present in high numbers this year, requiring spraying. Aphids don’t usually interfere with commercial corn pollination, but they can cause considerable problems with seed corn.”

Related:Follow corn ear from field to seed bag

Aphid numbers were so high in commercial fields in areas this year that some farmers became concerned. However, entomologists note that a natural predator soon attacked aphids, lowering the population significantly. Lucas points out, however, that seed corn producers can’t always wait for nature to take its course.

4. Harvesting: Pick at the perfect time. Beck’s uses a scout whose primary job is to determine which fields are ready for harvest and which need more time. “It’s all about ensuring high quality,” Lucas says. “If we’re in the middle of harvesting a field of seed corn and conditions change, or crop moisture changes and is no longer desirable, we will stop and go to another field.”

The position of the milk line in the kernel is key, Lucas adds. “We want it to be at least halfway down the kernel,” he says. “Moisture at that point is often in the 32% to 38% range. Harvesting at 30% is near ideal.”

Seed corn is picked and dried on the ear, all to protect the germ inside the seed. “Seed corn kernels only see one auger throughout the entire process, and that is the auger in the corn head,” Lucas says.

5. Processing: Do what it takes to ensure quality. Sorting and husking floors were once crowded with workers. Today, mechanical color sorters positioned on each of several conveyor lines handling incoming ears do much of the work once done by hand. A much smaller crew of workers finishes sorting.

The ear corn dryer facility at the Atlanta location contains 34 compartments, with wet corn entering at the top after arriving in the drying building on an inclined conveyor. Lucas notes that they will turn over each compartment 11 to 12 times, refilling with a different hybrid.

Once dried to 12% to 13%, ears go to the shelling and processing building. Once shelled, seed corn is cleaned and bagged.

“Everything we do here is geared toward putting the highest-quality product possible in the bag,” Lucas concludes.