Parental corn inbreds: hand pollination methods and cost studies
1942
Thayer, J.W. Jr | Down, E.E.
During the 1941 season, yield data and time and cost records covering man hours spent in pollinating, harvesting, sorting, and shelling were kept for the production by hand pollination of seed for 21 parental corn inbreds. e percentage of attempted pollinations acceptable for seed averaged 67.6 for all strains and ranged from a high of 83.3 to a low of 34.3 for individual strains. For the 10,037 attempted pollinations, the average yield per pollination per strain ranged from a low of 44 seeds to a high of 298 seeds and the average for all strains was 146.5 seeds. At the end of the season, the records showed that the average pollination required 3.92 minutes of man labor in the field and harvesting, sorting, and shelling required an additional 0.71 minute. With labor at 45 cents per hour, the cost per pollination, including materials, was approximately 4 cents. The cost of producing parental inbred seed corn varied between strains from a high of 91.0 cents per 1,000 seeds to a low of 13.6 cents. The average cost per 1,000 seeds for the 656 pounds of seed produced was 34.7 cents. On four strains, pollinations were made by the tassel bagging and bottle methods. One strain produced equally well with both methods, but the other three strains produced materially more when bottles were used. The cost of production for the four strains was 21.3 cents per 1,000 seeds when bottles were used and 28.6 cents with the tassel bagging method, an average saving of 25.5% in favor of the bottle method.
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