ATLANTA, Ind. – Beck’s is working with researchers at the University of Illinois to learn more about corn population interaction, and nitrogen placement as it relates to root architecture, according to a company official.

“If we’re going to make good recommendations to you moving forward … wouldn’t it be good to know how the root architecture and root volume impacts your performance?” asked Jim Schwartz, Beck’s director of agronomy, research and practical farm research. “I think, frankly, as an industry, we’ve been a little bit derelict in understanding and studying to help you all succeed.

“If we can just do three things – understand population, nitrogen and stress response – we think we’ve really started to help our customers and farmers out there understand how to place their products better.”

Schwartz said he’s not sure if root architecture would matter if farmers banded their fertility.

“That’s what we’re trying to understand,” he explained. “If you put these hybrids in different populations, does it matter? The data we looked at the other day says actually that umbrella root architecture, it’s different.”

The company’s corn lead analyzed five years of data to see if root architecture matters as related to population, stress tolerance and nitrogen utilization, Schwartz said. Once Beck’s has one more year of data, it will release the results, he added.

“When you think about moving forward, if populations are going to go up, if you’re going to think about banding fertility, if you’re going to place your fertility different, don’t you think it’s important for us to understand the interaction between nitrogen or fertility placement, stress, population, as it relates to your root architecture? Frankly, I think it’s really really critical to do that.”

Schwartz spoke during Becknology Days over the summer.

One area farmers could see change is the amount of land they farm, he noted. Currently, most producers farm 43,560 square feet per acre. In the future, that number could drop to 11,700 square feet or less, he predicted.

New technologies such as auto steer, autonomous auto steer, and see and spray have made it easier to treat individual plants and not the area in between the rows, Schwartz said. Farmers could apply foliar nutrition and fungicide plant by plant, he pointed out.

Changing the size of the rows was instrumental in the company having a corn hybrid plot with 400 bushels per acre two years in a row, Schwartz said.

“How were we doing that? They said don’t plant it above 28,000 (plants per acre). Interestingly enough, we were hitting 400 bushel between 36,000 and 42,000 with that hybrid. We did it by planting in 10-inch rows. In 30-inch rows, those plants are really close together. But when we went to 10-inch rows, we started spreading the plants row-to-row spacing out. The hybrid we hit 400 with very much had an umbrella root structure.”

Roots don’t like to touch, he stated. “When we were planting in 30-inch rows, we had a lot of that root touching and biosignaling that was probably telling that plant I’m stressed, I’m crowded. When we moved it into 10-inch rows, we gave that umbrella root structure the ability to express itself and it completely changed the performance of that hybrid.”

Beck’s has taken root samples to the University of Illinois to have them scanned. The goal is to look at what Beck’s can learn about two things in roots – volume and architecture, Schwartz said.

Beck’s has started classifying its corn products by root angle and root volume, he said. For example, the company’s hybrid 6414V2P has a very vertical root structure and lower volume, Schwartz said.