Climate change isn’t just making the world warmer. It’s also changing when and how much rain falls. That leaves more corn farmers at risk of facing drought during part of the growing season.
“A severe drought during the corn reproductive stage can cause a complete crop failure,” Ranadheer Vennam, a graduate student in the Mississippi State University Plant and Soil Sciences Department, said in a university news release. “So understanding corn responses to drought and managing accordingly is critical for successful corn production.”
Vennam and his laboratory group looked at how sensitive corn flowering is to drought and the impacts it has for farmers. Corn flowering is complex. Each individual ovule produces a long silk, which must capture pollen from the tassels above the plant to produce a kernel.
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