By Harold Watters, Ohio State University Extension
This is the fun part of my job. I get asked questions or am told I misguided someone and so I do a little field work to investigate what may be the reality. I thank Joe, Nick and Zack at the OSU Western Agricultural Research Station for giving me the space to work, and I think they enjoy the challenge and quest to find answers too.
So once again I ran a trial comparing “older” open pollinated corn genetics to modern corn hybrids. I still use Reid’s yellow dent as a basis for my work because there is so much of that old variety carried through into modern genetics. A chance cross occurred in Ohio at about the time of the Civil War and that accident carries through to today’s genetics and yield improvement.
WARS 2020 Antique corn trial, for yield and harvest stand. | |||
Yield | Stand | ||
Variety/ hybrid | bu/A | thou. Pl/A | |
1 | Reid yellow dent 110 | 105.7 | 21.1 |
2 | Green Field 114 | 121.4 | 15.0 |
3 | Krug 95 | 95.1 | 19.1 |
4 | Lancaster Sure Crop 120 | 129.7 | 22.5 |
5 | Rebellion 110 | 129.7 | 21.0 |
6 | modern transgenic hybrid | 228.3 | 29.3 |
7 | modern hybrid (2) organic | 236.5 | 29.2 |
8 | Wapsie Valley 85 | 114.0 | 22.0 |
LSD | 19.1 | 1.7 | |
C.V. | 10.8 | 6.1 | |
Prob > F | 1.2285E-11 | 1.2863E-11 |
In the Table, except for item number 6, these are all available and sold as organic corn seed. I was chastised a year or so ago that I was comparing varieties to hybrids, “of course they don’t yield as well.” So we have two modern hybrids here and yes the organic hybrid yielded right with the transgenic hybrid — no significant difference. Many of the organic varieties trace their lineage back to Reid’s yellow dent.