Figure 1. Symptoms of stalk rots in corn include premature wilt and ear drop. Stalk rot pathogens decay the central pith, which weakens the stalk. One can envision a healthy stalk being a solid rod of ...

Corn stalks should be sampled at least one week after black layers have formed on about 80% of the kernels of most ears. Sampling can be performed up to harvest. Areas selected for sampling should be ...

because the tassel — the top of the corn stalk — has about 90,000 pollen spores, Nagle said. Each one of those must link up to a silk — the fine “hair” in an ear of corn — in order to ...