“It is Just Dollars and Sense”
Nearly 100 percent of Nathan Burbrink’s 2011 corn crop will be planted to Mycogen
® SmartStax
® hybrids. That’s because he was so impressed with his 2010 results. He planted
2T784 side by side with a Herculex
® XTRA hybrid, a YieldGard VT Triple
® hybrid and a non-traited refuge.
Burbrink’s results were dramatic. The SmartStax hybrid out yielded the Herculex XTRA and the YieldGard VT Triple hybrids by 12 bushels per acre. It yielded 20 more bushels per acre than the refuge hybrid. Both the Herculex XTRA and the refuge were in the same base genetics as the SmartStax hybrid, offering a true comparison of yield.
Burbrink, who raises corn and soybeans in southeastern Indiana, was impressed at how much better the hybrid with SmartStax yielded, compared with the same hybrid with Herculex XTRA. “I was really pleased to see that the SmartStax corn, with more traits, cranked out such great yield,” Burbrink says.
But what really surprised Burbrink was the season-long, overall plant health of the SmartStax® hybrid. “The corn was just tremendously healthy and it was a good foot and a half taller than [the side-by-side corn] this year. It had a very uniform, good overall plant health, start to finish,” Burbrink says.
It is undeniable that the 5 percent requirement of SmartStax adds value to his operation, Burbrink says. “For example, if you are growing 1,000 acres of corn, instead of the 200 acres of refuge required for other technologies, you are down to 50 (with SmartStax). If you are getting 10 bushels per acre more (on the traited corn), that’s 1,500 extra bushels,” Burbrink explains. “It is just dollars and sense.”
Burbrink says he’s convinced SmartStax is the way to go on most of his corn acres next year. “I was just really impressed,” he says.