Rural Heritage April/May 2026

purchase it from some reliable grower in his own locality who makes a business of producing good seed corn. Seed brought from a distance may be expected to yield less by 5 to 10 bushels per acre than equally good seed of the same variety that has been grown in the locality for three or four years. Improving a variety. A high-yielding ear of corn cannot, within certain limits, be selected by any visible characters any more than a high-producing dairy cow. The best basis on which to select either is the performance of its ancestors and itself. The highest-yielding ear of a group may be located by planting kernels from each of them in separate rows under uniform conditions and weighing the product of each ear separately. Then by carefully saving seed from the best plants of the highest-yielding, earliest maturing or otherwise most desirable rows, and planting them in an isolated plot, improved strains may be obtained. Since the male parentage of the crop of any row cannot be controlled, and since ears from the best rows in such a test may have received pollen from inferior plants, a shorter cut to the desired end is to save a part of each ear tested. Then, when the best ears have been found by trial, mix

this remaining seed and plant it all in an isolated plot the following year. Such simple breeding methods have been found to increase the yield from 10 to 15 percent. SELECTION AND CARE OF SEED CORN Seed corn should be gathered in the fall after it is well matured and before heavy frosts, and stored in

The right way to remove a kernel for testing.

a dry, well-ventilated place where it will dry out quickly. Fairly low temperatures are not likely to injure seed if dry, but light freezes while the grain is full of moisture will often kill or weaken the germ. Seed corn should be selected in the field where the character of the plant, its maturity, and its surroundings may be observed. If selected from the crib just before planting, not only is the vitality apt

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