Wisconsin Corn Hybrid Performance Trials 2023: Southern Zone, early maturity grain

Compare grain corn hybrids of 107 day relative maturity or earlier, as rated by their own seed companies, under common management across the southern Wisconsin production zone.

Production system. field.

Analysis. Figures are averages over the three southern-zone locations rather than measurements at a single field, which is how the report publishes them. Entries were grouped into this trial by their company relative maturity rating, so the grouping itself rests on numbers the companies produced by differing methods.

Grain yield corrected to 15.5% moisture. Plot grain weight converted to bushels per acre and corrected to 15.5 percent moisture, the US commercial standard for shelled corn. The correction is what makes two plots comparable: grain harvested wetter weighs more for the same dry matter, so an uncorrected bushel figure measures the weather at harvest as much as the hybrid. A yield quoted without its moisture basis is not a figure that can be compared with anything. Standard: Ohio Corn Performance Test evaluation procedures.

Grain moisture at harvest. Moisture content of the grain as harvested, before drying. Reported alongside yield because it carries real cost: the same test charges a drying penalty for every point above 15.5 percent, so two hybrids at equal corrected yield are not equally profitable if one comes off the field wetter. Standard: Ohio Corn Performance Test evaluation procedures.

Test weight on grain at field moisture. Bulk density in pounds per bushel, measured on grain at field moisture rather than after drying. Because the measurement is taken wet, test weights from trials that dried their samples first are not directly comparable with these. Standard: Ohio Corn Performance Test evaluation procedures.

This trial grew 32 entries. AMSeed publishes results for 4 of them. 28 of the remainder are simply not recorded here yet: the source publishes them and we have not transcribed them, which is unfinished work rather than a judgement about the entries. The point of stating the total is that the trial is represented as what it actually was rather than as the slice we happen to cover.

One zone in one season, and the yield, moisture and test weight shown are zone averages rather than measurements at any one place: a hybrid that did well here may owe it to one of the three sites rather than to consistency across them. Relative maturity is a company rating, not a measurement this trial made, and the report itself warns that companies rate maturity by different standards and round to five-day increments.