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on corn, but perhaps on other plants as well. There is a great need for 

 improvement on some other crops. Oats needs a good deal of improvement, 

 but the corn needs the handiwork and skill of this breeder. 



Q. Mr. Chairman, I don't know whether I quite get the doctor's view. 

 Suppose we go to work and pick our seed, what seems to be a good seed for 

 picking, and put it in a corn crib with a top on it, open around the sides, a 

 common wagon shed, and there doesn't come any particular frost in the 

 fall. Are we safe in saying that that is a fairly good way, a reasonably 

 good way to store seed corn? Of course, once in a while we have a bad 

 frost along about in October, the first half of October. Are we to say it is 

 very unsafe without the assistance of some artificial heat? 



PRESIDENT MANN: He told you one test is to twist the ear. As the 

 corn matures the sugars change to starches and oils in the corn, and then 

 when you get a stiff cob it is a mature cob. If you pick only that kind of 

 ears you can hang them up in the corn crib and they won't suffer. Dr. 

 Hottes told you you can put mature corn into liquid air. Thirty-two degrees 

 many times will kill immature corn. That is the test for maturity. Stiffness 

 of the cob is one test. Does anybody else want to say anything about corn 

 or any other crop? This is a crop session. 



Mr. GOUGLER : Mr. Chairman, I would just like to give a little observa- 

 tion I had along this line this fall, but it was with soy beans instead of 

 corn. We had a very extensive soy bean grower. A year ago he decided to 

 build a soy bean house. He built a two-story structure, probably twenty 

 feet high. The upper part is divided up into six bins. Each bin will hold 

 about three hundred bushels. In this lower part he has a pretty large heating 

 plant that provides heat to dry them out. His idea was to be able to move 

 the beans from one bin to the other at will. He put his beans in there 

 this fall not very clean, with the idea of recleaning them. He went out one 

 day and put his men to work recleaning these beans, and he allowed them 

 to flow down over this pipe, over this fan, and then into the elevator and 

 back into another bin. Now, the peculiar thing that happened there the 

 heat was just right in the room and the beans were cold, but as they passed 

 through that pipe enough moisture was condensed that they took up 

 moisture. They produced enough moisture, the cold beans in the warm pipe, 

 that water just dripped from the end of that pipe all the time. He let his 

 men go ahead and complete the bin. They went up into the bin a few days 

 later and they found they had a solid wall clear across where they were 

 frozen solid. It ruined the whole three hundred bushels. They were put 

 in dry. 



PRESIDENT MANN: He thought they were dry, but they held a lot 

 of moisture in the sugar from the immature beans. We must appreciate the 

 great value of ventilation in taking care of the seed. There is going off the 

 same gas we are driving out of our lungs every breath carbon dioxide. 

 The drier it is and' the lower the temperature, up to a certain point, the 

 lesser the respiration that is going on, and if there isn't enough ventilation 

 to carry away that carbon dioxide, which is heavier than air, then they claim 

 it will change to alcohol in the seed and cause destruction. That is what 

 happens when ice stays on wheat or clover. The carbon dioxide can't escape 

 and stays in the plant to cause intoxication and death, and if any of you 

 don't believe that you just hold your breath for three minutes and you will 

 be dead drunk from the same cause, the formation of alcohol in your blood. 

 I heard once of a man who paid a high price for a bushel of fancy seed corn. 

 He was afraid the mice would get to it so he shelled it and put it in a carbide 

 can and screwed the top on it. In two or three weeks he didn't have any 

 more seed than a rabbit. Whenever you store seed corn, or any seed, store 

 it high enough so there can be enough circulation to carry away that gas. 

 Mr. GRAY: Is it necessary to plant soy beans with a drill or broadcast 

 them? 



PRESIDENT MANN: Well, I would say you could do either one. 

 Drilling is always more economical because you don't require so much seed, 

 generally get it better covered, better distributed and all that sort of thing. 

 You can do either one, of course. 



