It's Pollination Day!

With a three year old daughter, I get my fill of Disney princesses. If you have ever seen Frozen with your kids or grandkids, then you might remember Anna running around exclaiming, “It’s coronation day!”

I was recently explaining the process of corn pollination to my wife and she coined the phrase, “It’s pollination day!” Now as we are driving around, she and the kids will randomly make such an exclaimation when seeing tassels and silks in a field. In light of our recent pollination week (actually takes more than a day), I thought others may be similarly interested in this topic.

Like most plants, corn has both male and female parts. Pollen comes from the tassels (male parts) spiking from the top of the plant. The pollen is usually broken loose by wind and simply falls down on the silks (female parts) protruding from the husk covering the ear. As you can see in the picture to the right, each silk is connected to the ear and represents a potential kernel. After embedding on the silk, the pollen must grow a tube down the silk to fertilize the waiting ovary. Where this happens, a kernel is born. Where is doesn’t, there are empty spaces on the ear.

A thoroughly pollinated and developed ear will have roughly 800 kernels. In order to get a fairly average yield of 200 bushels per acre here in Central Illinois, we need to harvest 14.5 million kernels per acre! That means every pollen and every silk count! This extremely intricate process can be easily disrupted by heat, drought, insects, and other stresses, so we work hard to minimize these to the best of our abilities.

Hopefully you have a better understanding of how pollination is one of the most significant events in the life of a corn plant. It is also one of the most exciting and stressful weeks of the year for a farmer. We are thankful for the ideal weather and insecticides keeping this year’s crop on the right track. Retroactively... Happy Pollination Week 2018!