This week’s notes:

Corkscrew Mesocotyl in corn

1. We have been Scouting many fields from Minonk, IL to Capron, IL and various points in between. We have seen a wide spread amount of Corkscrew Mesocotyl over the past week.

Images of Corkscrew Mesocotyl from this past week.

1. Cause: Typically, the cause is wide variations of temperature swings from daytime highs to night time lows.  This causes the mesocotyl to simply wrap around the seed or come up crooked through the soil.  Often the plant will still emerge but be more than 2 leaves behind its neighbor.
   1. We did track soil temperatures in the mid afternoon in the high 70’s and late evening in the mid 30’s from April 23 to May 3^rd. this most likely was the cause.
2. What we have seen is less than 3 percent of stand which leads me to believe that these plants were the weaker germ seeds that normally would not have emerged under tougher conditions. However, we had exceptional planting conditions in this window most likely leading to a better than average overall stand.
3. Overall this is not something we need to be overly concerned about unless it exceeds 5% of total stand. We have found this across all brands.

For further information on Corkscrew Mesocotyl follow the link below:

https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/Corkscrews.html

Future Scouting:

V3 -V6

Below are 15 most important things we can scout for over the next 10 days.  While most of these items will not be an issue they are all areas we need to look at as we move through the next ten days.

1. Wireworm
2. Black Cutworm
3. White Grub
4. Corn Flea Beatle
5. Armyworm
6. Hop Virus Bore
7. Stewart’s Leaf Blight
8. Bill Bug
9. Grape Colaspis
10. Brown Stinkbug
11. Common Stalk Borer
12. Corn Rootworm Larvae
13. Goss’s Wilt
14. European Corn Borer
15. Common Rust

As always, we are here to help at AXIS Seed and we encourage you to leave a comment or a topic you would like us to cover for future postings.  Let us know if there is anything we can do to help maximize your bottom line.