Yet synchrony allows a farmer to spray herbicides, cultivate, irrigate, and most importantly harvest in a single operation. Synchrony is a remarkable feat of coordination by the plants. Days or weeks may elapse between leaf, tiller, spikelet or floret initiation, and yet each plant flowers at about the same time and grain ripens simultaneously within the span of a few days. The observed synchrony of crop development cannot be achieved without the coordinated responses of a number of developmental processes to the environment. How this coordination between plant and environment is achieved is largely unknown.
Farmers often use benchmarks to track corn development and time various management operations.
The accuracy of some of these statements may be debated, but the reality is often borne out of careful observations by farmers in their environment. Under normal planting date situations, corn growth and development is largely temperature driven. If we know how many GDU are required for various crop developmental stages, we can predict and time management operations. It is for a 100-day hybrid planted on May 1 at Arlington Wisconsin. I will use this model to report the development progress of actual fields at Arlington in 1997.