Addressing the Second Corn Ear Challenge

00:00 Hi, this is Kelly Gibb from Extreme Ag. I'm here with Steve Maher from Corteva Biologicals. We're out here today in my field day plot 00:06 that we had back in June. We're looking at the corn. I'm telling Steve some of the problems or goals that I have. I really wanna hold the second ear. 00:14 We're doing a great job with SAP testing and nutritional balance of setting the second year, but I can't always hold it. 00:21 Temple Roads and Matt Miles are telling me that it can't be done. I'm telling them, hold my beer. But it is a challenge. 00:27 It is a problem. And Steve's here to help today. And so Steve, thank you for coming out today. Nice to meet you. Steve is our new guy with us, 00:34 with Corteva Biologicals. He's not an Iowa guy. He's in Wisconsin, but we're still gonna accept him. Wisconsin. Great beer, great cheese. 00:41 So Steve's always welcome. Appreciate it. I can't hold the second year. Right. And I believe what, through the research 00:48 and the studying, you know, when the plant's in the vegetative state root growth is the priority of the plant, then we set the first year. 00:55 The first year becomes the first priority of the plant. Correct. Now with our nutritional balance, we're setting a second year on 85% of the stocks. 01:04 That becomes the second priority. The root gets pushed to third. Right. I believe, or I, 01:09 I feel like we're not moving enough sugar in the plant to keep everything viable. Right. So, you know, we, we got a great first year. 01:17 Uh, we got a decent second year, but they're aborting and you know, we're holding maybe 30% of them. And then we feel like the root shuts down too quick. 01:25 Well, the plant's probably not paying enough attention to the root 'cause. We're not moving enough sugars. This is a trial. 01:30 You and I, you know, we've talked about doing next year. What do you have kind of a plan? 01:34 What do you think we can do? So I think you're challenged. I think you're dead on with the not producing 01:42 and moving enough sugars to support the second year and the development of it. A key part of that is gonna be cytokine 01:48 and driving cell division. Um, cytokine comes from your roots when you're not getting new root regeneration or root development. 01:57 You don't have cytokine coming from the roots moving up the plant, driving, driving. 02:01 Even just photosynthesis, just driving that sugar development in your early fungicide application, you're going out, you're putting the, 02:09 the sugar mover premier. Right. And you're putting additional excite in there. Mm-Hmm. And the sugar mover premiere is named for exactly 02:16 what we want it to do is it's to drive sugar movement from this leaf tissue down to that ear and to support and fill a second ear. 02:26 We may be looking at needing to try a sequential application of that sugar mover and ex excite. 02:33 That would be where I would start. You know, so like our, our initial, uh, fungicide pass or fertility pass, uh, you know, you're talking VT or R one. 02:42 Right. You're saying maybe we need another shot of the sugar mover and the excite at R three. Yeah. You know what? 02:48 Maybe even slightly earlier, but Yep, yep. R two, R three, RR three would be the target that I would go for. 02:53 Keep the sugar moving, keep the STOs moving, things like that. And, and keep that plant viable. 02:58 You know, this is something that we've looked at the last couple years. Uh, last year we were so excited. 03:02 We had double ears all over and then a lot of them aborted. We talked about if it was the heat or something like that. 03:08 You have very hot drier last year. I, I don't think the heat and the dryness is as big a problem as 03:13 what we sometimes think if we have a healthy plant. I, I believe it's the other products. I believe it's the Corteva biological 03:21 products are gonna help us do this. I don't think it's heat. I don't think it's fertility. I think it's sugar. I think it's energy. Oh. 03:27 And, and it's just a, a better built plant factory from the beginning of a healthier plant is gonna do a much better job 03:35 of handling heat and producing its way through, through heat if it's set up right. Yes. Well, I would be really excited if you 03:44 and I could conduct this trial next year and put on those other applications of the Sugar Mover Premier and the Excite 03:50 and see what we can accomplish. Because there's nothing I'd like to do better than to prove Temple Roads wrong. 03:55 I, I'm, I'm be happy to be a part of it because if I can find a way to make corn better, I'm all for it. 04:01 Well, thank you Steve. You bet. Thanks a lot.