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All lodging won't be due to stalk rot.

Tom Bechman 1, Editor, Indiana Prairie Farm

September 25, 2013

2 Min Read

Corn plants gave all they had in some fields this year to make as much corn as possible. When they ran out of nutrients in the soil or the roots couldn't get to more nutrients due to dry weather, the stalks began pulling nutrients from other parts of the plant.

One place the plant pulls from to finish corn kernels near the end of the season can be the stalk. Plants will cannibalize stalks in order to produce as many viable corn kernels as possible. As far as the corn plant knows, the ears it produces will be seed, not feed or food.

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Danny Greene with Greene Crop Consulting, Inc., Franklin, believes that many weakened stalks he found early in the fall, before last week's rains, for example, were due to cannibalization, not stalk rot.

"You could split stalks open and unless you found corn borer damage in non-GMO corn, the pith still looked healthy in most cases," he says. "We really hadn't had the weather to that point that would favor stalk rot development. I believe that many of the plants simply needed more nutrients than they could get from the soil and started pulling them from the stalks."

A simple push test confirms that stalks are weak. If you push them and they crease at the bottom and won't snap back, the stalk is weakened and prone to lodging. It would be a good field to mark for early harvest if that happens consistently in a field, Greene says.

However, it doesn't mean that stalk rot caused it to happen, he emphasizes. Before you blame it on stalk rot, look for other symptoms. For management purposes, it's important to know which type of stalk rot is in the field. They may come in later, but right now, he believes you'll discover that it isn't stalk rots – just plants that gave all they had to produce an ear.

About the Author(s)

Tom Bechman 1

Editor, Indiana Prairie Farm

Tom Bechman is an important cog in the Farm Progress machinery. In addition to serving as editor of Indiana Prairie Farmer, Tom is nationally known for his coverage of Midwest agronomy, conservation, no-till farming, farm management, farm safety, high-tech farming and personal property tax relief. His byline appears monthly in many of the 18 state and regional farm magazines published by Farm Progress.

"I consider it my responsibility and opportunity as a farm magazine editor to supply useful information that will help today's farm families survive and thrive," the veteran editor says.

Tom graduated from Whiteland (Ind.) High School, earned his B.S. in animal science and agricultural education from Purdue University in 1975 and an M.S. in dairy nutrition two years later. He first joined the magazine as a field editor in 1981 after four years as a vocational agriculture teacher.

Tom enjoys interacting with farm families, university specialists and industry leaders, gathering and sifting through loads of information available in agriculture today. "Whenever I find a new idea or a new thought that could either improve someone's life or their income, I consider it a personal challenge to discover how to present it in the most useful form, " he says.

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