As corn marches towards maturity, an inevitable situation occurs: the plant essentially pulls nutrients from its reserves in leaves and stalk to remobilize into its grain, causing its own demise so that its offspring can live on. This may sound a little morbid, but this is part of the cycle of life. Annuals like corn only get one year to exist and develop seed that will grow in future seasons. Let’s examine further what goes on with corn at the last stage of its developmen

As corn transitions from vegetative to reproductive stages, nitrogen within the plant also changes direction. During vegetation the plant’s duty was to build out the photosynthetic collection system – deploy leaves, filled with chlorophyll, to capture solar energy and continue to build. But now in the reproductive phase, energy is directed to maintaining and filling the pollinated kernels on the ear(s). Yield has three components – Plants per acre, kernels per plant, a