Crusty from Corn

After an unpleasant start to my slumber I was able to keep my momentum going until half six the next day when a full bladder demanded some attention. I scrambled to quickly prepare myself for the outside world because I would be heading southwest to tackle some notes a larger corn site. I ran a couple of errands before starting the one hour and twenty four minute journey to the field. I filled both my fuel tanks, the one for the truck and the one for my brain. The drive was uneventful and I arrived ahead of nine. I walked the plots with my successor of the corn king title. His job will be to support our commercial team with some in depth corn characterization. I wanted to take some time to pass on some of my learnings and knowledge to the new guy so arranged this meeting in the field.

I’m going to need to be a little nerdy here in order for you to appreciate my title of today’s post. We walked the 100RM corn set and saw some pretty interesting things. We saw some nice differentiation for disease tolerance, specifically Northern Corn Leaf Blight and for an infuriating ear mould. This particular mould, Giberella Ear Rot or GER leads to the development of mycotoxins on the ear of corn that can get into animal feed and cause major issues with monogastrics like pigs and ruminants such as cows. It is a dirty business. It’s presence is ofter predicated by number of conditions including the critical disease triangle. The host is obviously present since it’s a corn plot, the pathogen is always in the our environment in Eastern Canada so it’s just the third leg of the tripod that is variable, the conditions. The summer of 2018 was the worst I’ve ever seen this affliction and I felt like in August we were getting some of the same conditions, mainly prolonged moisture in the canopy of the crop at a sensitive time, silking. This means that the mould spores can get on the silk and follow them up into the ear and develop. It’s especially bad when the hybrid has a long, tight husk that traps moisture inside and creates a perfect environment for a localized infection to develop. Then that husk might dry down some and seal shut to finish off a perfect incubation chamber for the disease. Why am I bringing all this up? Well, when I got into the 105RM set it was well polluted. The hybrids in this maturity seemed to all have long husks. I’m talking two to three inches longer than the end of the ear. More husk than I am comfortable looking at. And with that much excess, it created a great spot for GER to get cracking. The more I saw, the more annoyed and angry I began to get. By the time I was on the last section of the test I was near furious. How can I sell any of this stuff?! I mean, I’ll find a way but it’s not going to be easy at all. This was getting me hot.

At least it was a beautiful day. You can see from the sky in the above photo that it was lovely. We finished the 100RM set together and then split up to do the 105RM set, glad he didn’t see my building frustration, after we had a quick break for lunch and short tutorial on soybean notes. During the course of the day when I’m using my phone to gather my notes I generally place it in airplane mode to conserve battery. After several hours of work I switched it back on and got a pair of disconcerting emails. One was around a pending reorganization of a core division and the other was around a colleague on my team resigning to seek an alternative opportunity. On my long drive home I was able to make a few calls to address both of these things. I called the departing colleague to wish them luck on their next chapter and get the skinny on what was the motivation and also talked to other around that re-org. I returned a few other calls as well. I was able to make back home before six bells and had no concrete plans for dinner.

Upon looking in the freezer I spied this little treat I’d got myself when grocing. I used a slightly lower temp than the oven instructions and cut the time in half and launched these into the air fryer. You’re seeing some sriracha ranch dipping sauce that I finally got to use for the intended purpose. These were perfectly cooked and tasted amazing. I nailed it on the modified cooking instructions. When it was all cleaned up and I’d settled in for the evening the onslaught of bass started again. This time it was much earlier in the evening and I hadn’t fully committed to my bed yet. I did some recon around the house to see if my bed was the worst spot or if things were equally disruptive elsewhere. I checked the other rooms upstairs and they were marginally better. The main floor was appreciably better, as was the lower levels. I decided to take my probe a step further and ventured onto the front step which wasn’t as loud. When I got between our homes it was awful, almost felt magnified. The research showed that it was the absolute worst where it was the worst for it to be that way. Conceding to worry about it later I moved my operation to the guest bedroom. But after merely a half hour or so of the needlessly obnoxious bass it was stopped. At that time I returned to my usual nighttime post. I am suspicious that this noise is the intro to a video game or movie. I can’t say for certain if it is the same each night but it is similar enough to lead me to this suspicion. I had to be up very early to go back to the southwest in the morning for my last Genetic Field Day of the year. The last of my series of customer events. It was good that I was able to get right to sleep, even if it was at half ten.