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Some farmers are seeing long silks in corn

A corn specialist at Purdue University says many farmers are seeing unusually long silks in corn this year.

Bob Nielsen says some farmers have reported silks that are 6-9 inches when they are typically about 3-4 inches.

“What that tells us is that there’s some kind of dysfunction in that pollination and some kind of a poor “nick”  with the availability of pollen at the time that the silks are out,” he says.

He tells Brownfield this can be caused by dry conditions.

“The tend to emerge a little bit later and sometimes they emerge after the pollen is already gone and so they continue to elongate until they age and deteriorate and stop on their own,” he says.

Nielsen says although farmers shouldn’t be too concerned if they see long silks, they should still evaluate their corn crop in the next few weeks.

Audio: Bob Nielsen, Purdue University