Research News
Grain Corn Project Surprises Researchers by Alexis Kienlen
Front plots are 30-inch spacing and 20-inch spacing in the back plots. Early season photo.
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outhern Alberta farmers could benefit from the grain corn agronomy project Farming Smarter has in progress. A three-year grain corn project provided interesting results from the first year of trials. “We believe whole-heartedly that there are two pieces to major advancements in crops. I would like to think it’s half on the breeding end and half on the agronomy end,” said Ken Coles, general manager of Farming Smarter. The goal is to determine the best practices for southern Alberta to adapt grain corn to a dryland system. Corn is a developing market in the region. Some farmers in the area are already growing grain corn and companies such as Monsanto and Pioneer Hi-Bred are talking about expanding grain corn to Western Canada. Pioneer recently set up a low heat unit breeding facility outside Lethbridge and corn breeders are focussed on adapting cultivars to Western Canada. For the grain corn project, Farming Smarter partnered with Brian Beres from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Lethbridge, and Manjula Bandara, special crops scientist with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, Brooks. The team will collaborate with Pioneer and Monsanto on the trials. Farming Smarter received some last minute funding in the spring, and ran a few trials in Lethbridge and Medicine Hat “To me, the Lethbridge site was really interesting,” said Coles.
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Farming Smarter / SPRING 2016
Photos: Farming Smarter
“Everybody has the idea that corn needs a lot of water. We were at 60 per cent of normal for water last year, but the crop looked incredible,” he said. “I was very impressed with how corn did in a dryland situation. There is a perception that corn requires a lot of moisture. Given that the year we had was both very dry and quite hot, the dryland corn absolutely astonished me with how well it did.” Last year, the team was still able to get 80 bushel corn on dryland, compared to 20 to 30 bushel wheat that same year. Coles estimates that during a normal year, it might be possible to achieve 100 bushel corn on dryland. Corn may be more drought tolerant than many people think; which would make it a good crop for southern Alberta. Up until now, the corn market in southern Alberta has been more of a silage market. “There’s been the odd farmer playing around with grain corn, but it has never taken off in a significant way. But there are people growing it for grain and it is expanding on a yearly basis. My experience is that it will continue to expand. I was really impressed with it,” said Coles. There’s also a built in market, since many feedlots in the area could use corn. Grain corn can increase diversity in the crop rotation, while taking advantage of the hot summer days in southern Alberta. “We tend to grow a lot of cool season crops that get punished by our hot summers. Heat can be one of the limiting factors for our cool season crops, whereas it is an advantage for a crop like corn,” said Coles. GROWING NEW IDEAS / GROWING KNOWLEDGE / GROWING STEWARDSHIP