Agribusiness  March 10, 2016

Colorado Corn commits $200K more to research projects

GREELEY — The Colorado Corn Administrative Committee, which oversees how the state’s corn check-off dollars are spent, has allocated more than $200,000 to research projects for 2016, including three based at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

The $211,389 allocation is in addition to the Greeley-based organization’s approximately $185,000 invested in ongoing or recently concluded research endeavors for corn growers in Colorado.

Under the corn check-off system, a penny per bushel of corn produced in the state is spent on research, market development, outreach, education and other agriculture-related endeavors.

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Over the years, Colorado Corn has provided money, input and resources to a long list of projects that have evaluated irrigation practices, alternative water-transfer methods, seed varieties, root structure, livestock, farm safety, environmental impacts, biofuels, rotational fallowing and a number of other aspects of farming, all to help producers become more efficient.

Along the way, it has teamed up with municipalities, businesses, universities, research facilities, and state officials and agencies in an effort to bring more tools and knowledge to Colorado’s producers.

“Each of these projects represents yet another step forward in Colorado Corn’s efforts to help farmers produce more food with less resources, and discovering the most sustainable methods of doing so,” said Mark Sponsler, the organization’s executive director, in a prepared statement. “Like other research endeavors we’ve supported over the years, these new projects and their results will play a critical role for the future of our farmers and our state’s $40 billion agriculture industry.”

The administrative committee’s research action team agreed to fund the following endeavors:

• $141,282 ($47,094 per year over three years) to CSU’s Raj Khosla, Robin Reich and Louis Longchamps to research and determine the most productive, efficient, profitable and sustainable practices in irrigated corn production. In particular, this project will examine the agronomic advantages of using variable-rate and precision irrigation methods, precision-nitrogen management, and variable-seeding rates.

• $31,580 to Kirk Broders at CSU to complete a comprehensive survey of bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens of corn grown in Colorado, including foliar, ear, stalk and root pathogens. This information later will be used to direct future pathological studies of corn at the school.

• $21,240 to Jerry Johnson and Sally Sauer at CSU to continue testing yield performance of four drought-tolerant corn hybrids compared with four traditional, non-drought-tolerant hybrids, at three different plant densities, under dryland production conditions in northeast Colorado.

• $17,287 to Louis Comas with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service to continue overseeing development of a tool for monitoring and managing water stress in corn.

GREELEY — The Colorado Corn Administrative Committee, which oversees how the state’s corn check-off dollars are spent, has allocated more than $200,000 to research projects for 2016, including three based at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

The $211,389 allocation is in addition to the Greeley-based organization’s approximately $185,000 invested in ongoing or recently concluded research endeavors for corn growers in Colorado.

Under the corn check-off system, a penny per bushel of corn produced in the state is spent on research, market development, outreach, education and other agriculture-related endeavors.

Over the years, Colorado Corn has provided money, input and resources to a long…

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