Skip-Row Corn As A Drought Mitigation Strategy.

“Very few dryland corn fields will be harvested for grain” was a quote in the September 16, 2005 issue of Crop Watch by Doug Anderson, Extension Educator in Nuckolls and Thayer counties in Nebraska and “We have been really dry down here this year and have just received rain in the last 2 weeks”. Much of the area in the High Plains was in a winter wheat-fallow rotation because of limited precipitation. With no-till; summer crops such as corn, grain sorghum, sunflower, and proso millet were added to the cropping system making two crops in 3 years instead of one crop in 2 years or gaining one addition crop in six cropping seasons. Even with no-till these summer crops sometimes fail or yields are extremely low. Research with skip-row corn began in 2003 after I observed that in a hybrid grain sorghum test in 2002 the only plots that produced grain were in areas where the plots on either side failed to produce viable stands because of poor seed quality or unadapted hybrids. The idea behind skip-row planting is to keep developing corn plants from using all of the available soil water too early in the growing season. Because water in the soil between widely spaced rows can’t be reached by the plants until later in the season, there is water available to the plants in July and August.    Nine years of research has been completed in southwest Nebraska and results and observations have provided us with information to make this cropping system successful. The requirements include wheat crop residue levels of 4,000 plus pounds with good crop residue distribution, good weed management, a herbicide tolerant crop and the equipment being able to plant in heavy crop residues. For areas where the expected crop yield is less than 120 bushel/acre the plant two skip two is recommended while the plant two skip one is recommended for expected yields up to 160 bushels. Some yield will be sacrificed if drought stress is not experienced (when compared to conventional planting), but yields can be improved up to 40 bushel/acre in limited soil water situations. A quote from a producer in a 2005 e-mail on August 25, 2005, “I am convinced that if we hadn’t planted skip-row corn we wouldn’t have raised any corn this year”.