Buzz over short-stature corn has industry talking

Bryan Dillehay, DeKalb technical agronomist in Maryland, surveys experimental short statured corn hybrids in a demonstration plot in Queen Anne, Md. (Photo by Sean Clougherty)

These days, Bryan Dillehay can’t go to a meeting about corn hybrids without getting questions about short stature corn.
Buzzing around the industry for several years in research stages, seed companies are within a few years of commercially releasing new hybrids that mature about two to four feet shorter than traditional hybrids and grower anticipation is rising.
“At our grower meetings, our dealer meetings, it’s what they want to hear about,” said Dillehay, a DeKalb technical agronomist in Maryland.
Dillehay said on Delmarva, there are about eight to ten hybrids in Bayer’s Preceon Smart Corn System in demonstration plots and a few larger Grower Experience Trials.
Two hybrids have similar maturities to much of the corn grown in the region, he said.
He expects more trials next year in the region and acreage nationwide to triple to about 100,000 acres as the targeted commercial release for 2025 approaches.
With different breeding technology, Corteva has been at work on its own short stature corn hybrids for about ten years with this year its first having trials on Delmarva at six locations, according to Chris Scuse, territory sales manager for Pioneer seed at Corteva Agriscience.
Expecting the name to change from its current moniker “Reduced Stature Corn,” Scuse said they also are anticipating a commercial release in 2025, and grower curiosity continues to rise.
“It’s the hot topic of the year,” he said. “Growers get to see it, touch it.”
As Bayer and Corteva run about neck-and-neck toward their product commercialization, Stine Seed has pursued shorter hybrids in its breeding program intently for more than 20 years and has already brought hybrids bred to be shorter to market.
“We didn’t purposefully get into short-stature corn; our breeding process brought that to us. Now, we know it’s the way of the future,” Stine President Myron Stine said in a Sept. 2022 post on the company’s website. “Essentially, we were selecting the highest-yielding genetics in our program to move on to the next generation, and our highest-yielding germplasm just so happened to be from shorter plants. It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that this became apparent after we started looking at plant height in our plots.”
Greg Harris of Venture Farms in Federalsburg, Md., sells seed for Stine Seed and said he’s sold some of the company’s short corn on Delmarva with one grower having success in planting it in 15-inch rows a few years ago.
Harris also is a dealer for Hubner, a Bayer brand, and said there’s been a lot of talk about short corn from customers.
Farmers that do their own spraying seem to be most interested in short corn’s potential to maximize use of their own equipment.
The push in developing the technology is to drive the plant’s efficiency even further, company reps said. Protection against hurricane and other strong wind events is one selling point.
Green snap and stalk lodging from heavy winds can decimate a crop’s yield just as it is reaching the finish line to harvest. In general, stalk size in the shorter hybrids is increased, nearly double that of conventional corn hybrids in some cases.
Root growth is shown to be faster and deeper in the soil, too, Dillehay said, making the plant more efficient in water and nutrient use. That combination has the companies testing the impact of higher seeding rates on performance.
Another touted benefit is in late season applications of fertilizer, fungicide or other products.
At a shorter height, a farmer’s ground sprayer could still be an option to use, adding efficiency to that equipment, the reps said. That also could be a helpful option for fields where aerial application is restricted or has limited availability, Dillehay said.
“This gives you access,” he said. “This opens up to any farmer anywhere.”
After pollination, Scuse said, the corn plant still needs about 37 percent of its total nitrogen, so later “spoon-feeding” applications could more precisely feed the plants.
“It’s a lot more flexible for the grower,” Scuse said. “It’s really making guys rethink. It could very well be a game changer.”
Even as grower interest swells, the reps said there’s still much to learn about the technologies’ performance before it’s ready for the marketplace.
Scuse said local data — at least two years’ worth — is key to see how they do in Delmarva’s specific environment.
“There’s still a lot we have to learn,” he said.
Dillehay said further study will work toward reducing variability in details like ear height and ironing out any changes in management through the season.
“We have to be concerned with that reduced variability,” he said. “Consistency thrives in agriculture when it comes to yield.”