Detasseling facts for kids
Detasseling corn means taking off the top part of a corn plant, called the tassel. This tassel is where the plant's pollen is made. By removing it, farmers can control how corn plants are pollinated. This helps them create new, stronger types of corn by mixing two different kinds together. This process is called hybridizing.
Farmers plant two different types of corn in a field. They remove the tassels from one type of corn. This means that corn can only be pollinated by the other type of corn in the field. The result is a new, special kind of corn called a hybrid. Hybrid corn plants are usually more alike and produce much more corn than regular corn. Farmers carefully choose which corn types to mix. This way, the new hybrid corn will have the best features from its "parent" plants. Detasseling usually involves both special machines and people working together.
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How Corn Detasseling Works
Machines Help Detassel Corn
Most detasseling is done in two main steps. First, machines do a lot of the work, and then people finish up. Machine detasseling itself often has two parts. A machine called a "cutter" goes through the corn rows first. It cuts off the very top part of the corn plant. This makes all the plants a similar height. A few days later, a "puller" machine comes through. It pulls the tassel out of the plant using two fast-moving rollers. These machines remove most of the tassels.
Detasseling machines can remove about 60% to 90% of the tassels in a field. However, farmers need at least 99.5% of tassels removed for the best hybrid seeds. Machines sometimes miss tassels because plants are different heights. Also, machines can throw tassels into the air. These tassels might land on other corn plants and accidentally pollinate them. It's better for the pulled tassels to fall to the ground.
People Finish the Detasseling Job
Even after machines have done their part, people are needed to finish detasseling. They remove any tassels the machines missed. They also take out tassels that got stuck in the leaves of other corn plants. Workers either walk through the corn field, pulling tassels by hand, or they ride on special detasseler carriers. These carriers are used when the corn plants are too tall to reach from the ground. Each carrier can hold 8 to 12 workers.
Detasseling is often a first job for teenagers in rural areas of the Corn Belt in the Midwestern United States. It's seen as a common rite of passage for many teens there. The exact start date for detasseling depends on the area and how the corn is growing that year. The detasseling "season" usually lasts 2 to 4 weeks. Workdays can be short, just a few hours, or long, over 10 hours.
Pay for detasselers can vary a lot. Some earn minimum wage, while others make more than $12.00 an hour. How much someone earns depends on the seed corn company, the boss, the worker's experience, and even the field conditions. For example, the number of plants per acre or how many tassels the machines already pulled can affect pay.
How wages are figured out also differs. Some bosses pay a set hourly wage. Others pay by "piece rates," meaning workers get paid for every row, section, or acre they detassel. Some contractors even use a rating system to decide how much a detasseler earns each day. Besides teens, some areas also hire migrant workers for detasseling. Migrant workers are usually paid by piece rates.
History of Detasseling Corn
Early Days of Hybrid Corn
Detasseling was used a long time ago, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Farmers tried to improve corn by planting different rows and detasseling some of them. But this didn't make corn yields much bigger, so they stopped doing it.
Around 1910, corn scientists got excited about growing more corn by mixing two high-yielding types. They planted these types in alternating rows and detasseled one of them. This method also didn't work as well as they hoped.
However, this early work led to the modern way of making hybrid corn. In 1908, a scientist named George Harrison Shull described something called heterosis, or "hybrid vigor." This means that the new corn plant from mixing two types can be stronger and better than both parent plants. By 1917, a way to make this hybrid corn for sale was developed. In 1933, less than 1% of corn in the U.S. was hybrid. But by 1944, over 83% was! This hybrid seed was made by planting one type of corn, then several rows of a second type. The tassels of the second type were removed by hand so the first type could pollinate them.
Changes in the Late 1900s
People detasseled hybrid corn by hand until the mid-1950s. Then, scientists found a special gene that made one type of corn unable to produce pollen. But the hybrid corn it made could still produce pollen. This discovery helped seed companies save a lot of money because they didn't need as many people to detassel by hand. By the mid-1960s, almost all hybrid corn seed used this special gene.
But things changed in 1971. A fungus called southern corn leaf blight spread. The special gene used to make corn sterile was very weak against this fungus. About 90% of hybrid corn in the U.S. had this gene. Around 15% of the corn crop was lost to the fungus. For the next few years, farmers stopped using the gene, and almost all corn was detasseled by hand again.
In the mid-1970s, machines were created to help with detasseling. This also helped because there were fewer teens available for farm work. In the 1980s, new genes were found that made corn sterile but were not affected by the fungus. Today, corn hybridization uses a mix of machines, hand detasseling, and these special male-sterile genes.
How Seed Corn Fields Are Planted
Seed corn fields are planted in a repeating pattern. This pattern is sometimes called a "panel," "block," or "set." There are two main ways to plant these patterns. One common way is a 6:2 pattern. This means six "female" rows (the ones that will be detasseled) are planted, followed by two "male" or "bull" rows (the ones that will provide pollen). Another common pattern is 4:1, with four female rows followed by one male row. Other patterns are also used, like 4:2 or 4:1:6:1. This pattern repeats throughout the entire corn field.
Sometimes, extra rows of male plants are planted around the edges of a seed corn field. These are called "buffer" or "isolation" rows. They help stop unwanted pollen from other fields from blowing into the seed corn field. Another important step to keep unwanted pollen out is called roguing. This is when workers remove any plants that are different from the types intentionally planted in the field.
See also
In Spanish: Despanojado para niños
