By Margy Eckelkamp, The Scoop magazine
Probably no crop has been scouted better through pollination than in 2025 says Austin Schleich, a technical agronomist with Channel. Across his geography in western Iowa, Schleich says the phenomenon of “overly tight tassel wrap” has agronomists, farmers and scouts walking the rows, looking up, and evaluating from stalk to tassel.
“In the last two weeks, it’s really blown up and had a lot of questions about it [overly tight tassel wrap,]” he says. “Myself alongside the Channel seed professionals I work with are out in the fields, monitoring our pollination pretty intensely. We are extremely happy with our pollination progress so far. However, we have seen the tight tassel wrap in other products within the geography outside the Channel lineup.”
Overly tight tassel wrap has been reported by farmers and agronomists from Ohio to Nebraska and Missouri to Minnesota. Matt Montgomery from Beck’s Hybrids says this agronomic issue “does not, at the moment, appear to be at epidemic levels but at elevated levels.” The agronomic issue is attributed to many factors including environment, genetics and rapid growth stages.
Regarding this year’s growing season, Corteva provided this statement: “The weather conditions we have seen this year have really been an anomaly – in some areas we’ve seen as much as double the normal rainfall with sustained, higher-than-normal temperatures. These same conditions can lead to the presence of disease-causing pathogens. Our field teams and agronomists are working with customers to proactively monitor and manage the potential for disease development and treatment.”
Identify The Issue
Montgomery and the team at Beck’s are encouraging farmers to make two scouting passes this year.
Is it Genetics or Environment?
Tarochione says opinions vary widely as to what is causing overly tight tassel wrap. But he believes undoubtedly it’s a function of genetics and environment and he strongly affirms there are more pollination issues in 2025 than just tight tassel wrap.
“Obviously, it’s ‘G by E.’ We talk a lot about how genetics and environment interact in all things agronomy. This is no different. But I don’t know that I feel confident we have a good handle on if there are specific environmental conditions that are causing it,” Tarochione says.
Genetics
Weihmeir points to plant characteristics exhibited by hybrids–pointing to hybrids with more inline tassels–less branching.
“It’s a more condensed tassel structure,” he says. “We have hybrids with condensed tassel types, but I haven’t seen tight tassel wrap in our portfolio widespread.”
Planting Dates
Schleich says he’s seen the tassel wrap phenomenon across a wide variety of planting dates-from April 15 to May 7.
Tarochione adds, “I don’t think that there is a specific planting window. It’s been observed in many states as pollination has progressed northward in the corn belt.
Other Pollination Issues
While tight tassel wrap brings a novelty interest in pollination issues, there are many other agronomic concerns during this important time in the corn crop.
What could tight tassel wrap mean for yield?
Tarochione says you can have tight tassel wrap and acceptable pollination.
“You can have tassel wrap and have acceptable pollination in a field with tassel wrap. And you can have poor pollination in fields that aren’t struggling with tassel wrap,” he says. “So it’s more complex than just does it have tassel wrap or not when it comes to pollination. Because if you’ve got two hybrids in a field like in a split planter scenario where you had hybrid A on the left side hybrid B on the right side of the planter. It might pollinate just fine, even with a wrap tassel, because the other hybrid will pollinate it.”
What does this mean for next year?
Clayton Robinson, Channel Corn Brand Portfolio Lead says, “ultimately, our breeding organization is very aware of that this issue [tight tassel wrap] is going on in the industry, and we are probably looking at this with a finer tooth comb moving forward. We’re really happy with how channel corn products have pollinated in the field this year, but it’s always a good reminder to continue to be vigilant, to look for potential genetic issues that can present themselves when the environment is right.”
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