With weather conditions unpredictable for spring, irrigation scheduling in corn should be carefully considered. In other words, manage scheduled irrigation based on either soil water need or crop water use along with optimization of pumping plant efficiency and strong, high-yielding hybrid choices. Plant corn tolerant to your environmental conditions and to your irrigation system scheduling. Timing is key when water use is to be optimized and seed-producing crops like corn, beans, wheat, barley and sunflowers can rapidly respond to irrigation at particular stages of development. These grain and oilseed crops are usually more sensitive to stress during heading, flowering and pollination as compared to other crops such as sugarbeets, potatoes and alfalfa that respond more directly to heat and cumulative water use than to stress at specific growth stages.
Corn is very sensitive to drought stress during the flowering and reproductive stages.
Stress at early vegetative stages is not nearly as serious as stress during flowering, pollination and early seed filling. Grain corn is the most sensitive to drought stress between the twelfth-leaf and blister kernel stages. Corn can be irrigated during these stages without any harm to pollination. Water applied through a sprinkler irrigation system is over too short a period to hurt pollination, and corn produces three to five million pollen grains per plant which can fertilize 600 to 700 kernels per ear with pollen shed lasting 10 to 14 days. However, stress during any part of the cropping season can limit corn yield.