Studies of quality in canning corn

By the use of the puncture machine described in this study, significant differences in tenderness were obtained at canning stage of maturity on 66 single crosses of Golden Bantam sweet corn as an average of two test years. Chewing tests for tenderness of 11 selected cultures of Golden Bantam grown in five test seasons gave differences approaching significance. Puncture tests for tenderness on the same material showed highly significant differences. Moisture tests were used in the later years of this experiment along with thumb nail tests, silking dates, and general ear characteristics for determining the exact canning stage in each culture. Inbred lines showing low puncture indices tended to give crosses having a low puncture index. The parent-progeny correlation coefficients which were obtained indicated that tenderness was intermediate in F1 crosses in comparison with the parents. An interannual correlation for puncture indices of the years 1929 and 1930 on 60 crosses was higher but not significantly higher than the correlation for yield in the same crosses. A seasonal difference in tenderness on 11 cultures of Golden Bantam in a five-year test was observed both by the puncture machine and by chewing tests. A pronounced difference due to cultures for the five-year period was observed also. Puncture index in the data of harvest experiment was positively correlated with date of silking and negatively correlated with yield in 66 crosses grown for two test years. Percentage of husk appeared to have no relation to tenderness. Stage of maturity as measured by percentage of moisture at harvest was negatively and very significantly correlated with puncture index for four cultures tested. Resistance to puncture differed in four cultures of Golden Bantam during early stages of development of the kernels. Regression coefficients determined for puncture index and percentage moisture for the four cultures did not differ significantly, however. In a study of pericarp thickness on four cultures of Golden Bantam, differences were observed between the precanning and postcanning stages of development for all cultures. No significant difference between cultures was observed. In a study of sampling technic for purposes of increasing the accuracy of the collection of tenderness data with the puncture machine, it was found that when twice the number of ears were sampled with half the number of puncture tests taken on each ear, the accuracy of the test was almost doubled.