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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Anyone in Phoenix?/de-tasseling

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  • From: Janet Bachmann <janetb AT ncat.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Anyone in Phoenix?/de-tasseling
  • Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 07:53:25 -0500

Willie is right about the reason for detasseling corn.  It is done to produce hybrid seed.  I grew up in Iowa and one of my first jobs was detassseling.  (I think I was 14 and barely 5 feet tall, the minimum height for the work.)  Anyway, corn is wind pollinated.  The pollen falls from the tassel to land on silks of the same or other corn plants within a mile or so.  Hybrid corn is the result of carefully controlled cross pollination of two "inbred" lines.  One line provides the pollen, which falls on the silks of the secong inbred line.  The second inbred line is detasseled so that its pollen will not fall on the silks.  The last time I went detasseling (1982), companies planted 2 rows for pollen shedding to 4 rows to be detasseled and receive pollen from the other 2 rows.  The detassling job consisted of walking down the row and pulling out the tassel (not the leaves) by hand.  The fields were large and the rows probably 1/2 mile long.  There are other ways to manage corn pollination, but I won't get into them here.  This is probably already more than you wanted.
Janet Bachmann
Fayetteville, AR


 
also- does anyone know what the point of de-tasseling corn is?  i tried to find some info yesterday and i am still "cornfused".  my niece said when she was in nebraska one summer, all the teenagers there had summer jobs de-tasseling corn.  now i guess a lot of it is done by machine.  we grow lots of field corn and sweet corn here and i had never heard of it.
thanks, lauren
    
I'm no corn expert, but.....

It is probably to control pollenation (pollination? my spell checker 
likes neither) for seed production.  Maybe for hybrid varieties.

  

-- 
Janet Bachmann
Agriculture Specialist
National Center for Appropriate Technology
P.O. Box 3657
Fayetteville, AR  72702
(479)442-9824
(479)442-9842 fax
janetb AT ncat.org 
www.attra.ncat.org



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