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Lancaster, OH | When I was with them, I wanted to know a number, too. However, as you can see from some of the posts on this board, in some areas 20k is medium. Hard to believe from where you sit but it's true that different areas support different populations. You can't compare in actual numbers the low, medium, high populations in Oklahoma drylands to Illinois drylands. I called Dr. Thomison at OSU to get another opinion and got what our agronomists were also saying.
Here in Ohio, an average or medium populations would be about 30-32k seed drop. A high population would be 34-36k drop. Notice I'm saying drop because that is not the population. On our average soils, we'd like to see at least 28k final ear count for above average yields. Under high production environments, including irrigation, we can go to 40k drop.
Unfortunately, with the increased price of seed (I should say "value" because of the traits involved) some guys have tried to cut back populations and are not seeing the yield advantage due to the ear count. If you want to push yields, populations are a great, relatively inexpensive place to start.
We can start another thread on increase pops don't necessarily increase yields due to spacing, emergence, etc. so don't forget those factors. | |
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Pioneer newsletter about corn populations.
