View of a Large Seed Production Field of Southern Hybrid No. 61 
Southern Hybrids are Produced on a 
Field Scale by Detasseling 
Why Seed Should Not Be Saved from Your 
Corn Crop Produced from Southern 
Hybrid Seed 
There is one thing about hybrid seed corn that many 
farmers find it difficult to understand because it runs counter 
to established practice; namely, why it is not practical to 
select and plant seed from a fine field grown from hybrid 
seed. The answer, according to Joe Robinson of the Iowa 
Corn and Small Grain Growers Association, is that the yield 
will drop from 10 to 20 per cent the first year. 
It is easy to see why. Your hybrid seed corn is a mixture 
of four inbreds. In the double cross that you plant is the 
vigor and the relative uniformity secured by crossing. But 
in the next generation, if you take seed corn from that field, 
your uniform, vigorous corn begins to break up into different 
strains. 
Instead of the corn you plant in 1940 looking like the 
hybrid corn produced in 1939 from purchased seed, part of 
it may look like one of its grandsires, an inbred with poor 
stalk but high yield; another part may look like another 
grandsire, the inbred that had vigor but no particular yield- 
It Makes No Difference Where the Seed 
of Any Specific Hybrid Is Grown 
ing pow 7 er, and small ears. The field will be uneven, the weak 
points of the inbred ancestors will come to the surface and 
the production will be low. 
Another thing that farmers have difficulty in understand¬ 
ing is why hybrid seed will produce well a long distance 
from where it was produced. In the old open-pollinated 
days farmers were told not to buy seed grown outside their 
own county. Good advice, too, because that was mongrel 
corn that was good only because it had been selected over 
the years to fit a certain locality. 
But hybrid seed is a definite combination of characters. 
If one of those characters is drought-resistance the corn will 
resist drought in Mississippi even though the seed was 
grown in Illinois. If one of those characters is early ma¬ 
turity it will get ripe early in Tennessee even though the 
seed was grown in Mississippi or Louisiana, 
The important thing in hybrid corn is not where it was 
grown, but what its characteristics are. 
What Southern Hybrids Will Do 
Southern Hybrids are bred to yield more corn per acre, to stand up better, and to stand more drought than open-pollinated 
corn. Any one of these qualities is well worth the price of the seed. In 1938 the breeders of Southern Hybrid corn con¬ 
ducted scientific yield tests to determine the correct hybrids to be used for various soil types in the South. Some of these 
results are shown in the table below: 
Report of Test Plot on Delta Soil Conducted at Vicksburg, Mississippi 
Variety: Bu. per acre 
Southern Hybrid 61 (110-115 day maturity). .. 75.0 
Southern Hybrid 63 (105 day maturity)... 69.5 
Open-Pollinated Paymaster . 59.9 
Open-Pollinated Mosby’s Prolific. 54.1 
Open-Pollinated Watley’s Prolific . 43.4 
This test demonstrated beautifully the ability of Southern 
Hybrids to stand drought. The test plot had practically no 
rain from the time it was planted until it was harvested. 
In studying this report one must bear in mind the fact that 
Southern Hybrids, under ideal conditions, are capable of 
yielding well over 100 bushels of corn per acre. The purpose 
of this report is to show the difference in yielding ability 
between Southern Hybrids and open-pollinated corns. Yields 
per acre were calculated on the basis of dry, shelled corn. 
4 RUSSELl-HECKLE 
Quantity Prices Given on 
