Manitoba corn harvest update

Oct 15, 2018

As of Monday, grain corn harvest in Manitoba is approximately 30% complete. This coming week is looking very positive with regards to the weather, so progress should be impressive in a week's time.

When organizing field order of corn harvest, kernel moisture is the leading factor. However, due to environmental conditions damaging stalks this year, order of harvest may require additional factors. A push-test is an easy method to determine if a field should be harvested before others. At ear-height, or just below the ear, push the corn stalk to a 45 degree angle, and repeat on 50 plants (10 plants at 5 stops in the field). If 10% or more of the stalks have breakage, consider harvesting that field next. Losses due to lodging appear to be significant this year, so following these steps could simply save some yield.

Conditions haven't been ideal for natural grain dry down in the field. Manitoba Agriculture has an article from a while back indicating speed of natural drying in the field, in October and November. It also touches on artificial low temperature versus high temperature drying, estimating drying costs, in-storage cooling and much more. It is a great reference to bookmark for future reference.

The Manitoba Corn Growers Association would like to wish everyone a very safe and happy remainder of harvest for 2018!

Source : Government of Manitoba

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.