How do you make seed corn from corn?

Answer 1

Corn seeds can drop from the cob to propagate. Birds have been known to carry corn seeds great distances and spread the crop. In addition, some animals will move the cobs to other locations to eat them and leave some seeds along the way.

Answer 2

Commercial corn today is 100% hybrid corn. This means that the seed corn is produced by cross-pollinating two inbred lines. Because corn plants have both male (tassels) and female (silks) reproductive parts, a seed corn field has to be altered in order to keep the plants from pollinating themselves and therefore just producing more inbred seeds.

This is done by detasseling the 'female' rows of corn. Basically what's happening is we are taking a plant with male and female parts and removing the male part and thus creating a 'female' plant. Detasseling is a process done by mechanical means and by human hand where the tassels are literally pulled out of the plant before it can produce pollen and fertilize its own silks. So a seed corn field will be planted either 4x1 meaning four rows of inbreds that will be the female next one row of a different inbred that will do the pollinating (sometimes the field will be planted 6x2).

Once the females have been detasseled, the male plants' tassels produce pollen to fertilize the females during the mid-summer months. Once this process takes place, the male rows are mowed down in order not to contaminate the seed harvested as their ears will consist of inbred seeds (they pollinated themselves). Prior to the first killing frost the female rows will be picked on the ear and then sent through a shelling machine to remove the seeds. The seeds are cleaned, sorted by size and shape (flats v.s. rounds), and bagged. Then typically they are shipped off, over-priced, and sold to farmers;)

Answer 3

from corn