New Corn Coming for Southeast

May 30, 2000

A new corn variety capable of adapting to the Southeast’s sandy soils and warm climate and that can be used for cattle silage or forage is being prepared for production. A large-scale trial now is underway to document the benefits in silage-fed steers.

Known as GT-HID9, the new variety is a source of yellow dent corn germ plasm that should spell the advent of new commercial hybrids with the adaptability and silage-forage traits. Currently, says USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, few such hybrids are available to dairy farmers in South Carolina, Florida or Georgia where 95% of corn is grown in the Coastal Plain. With the April release of GT-HID9 seed to plant breeders, new silage hybrids could become commercially available to farmers in six years.

At the experiment station in Tifton, GA, researchers took an old corn hybrid called Coker 77B and propagated and screened thousands of inbred plants for desired forage and dairy silage properties. With the help of an in vitro procedure and cow rumen, they developed GT-HID9 that has dry matter digestibility beyond Coker 77B.