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NWMO | A corn seed sitting in the soil for a prolonged period of time is not always a detrimental thing, however, the conditions can make a big difference
As the previous comment said, cool and dry isn’t typically a big deal, hot and dry typically isn’t either. Of course, there are caveats to this, but that’s a different situation.
It’s when you get cool and very saturated conditions that I see the biggest problems arrive. There’s multiple reasons for this. There’s a lack of oxygen in the soil when the soil is highly saturated. Oxygen is key for seedling emergence. Furthermore, there’s a lack of heat which is also a necessity for seedling emergence.
Cool and wet is also the formula for certain seedling diseases. You get a weakened seedling that gets attacked by an invigorated pathogen and you have the makings of some real issues. If you have insect pests in your soil then you’ll have even more issues.
Seed treatment with fungicide and insecticide, along with Bt traits, helps mitigate these problems, but they’re not a 100% cure all.
As for the seed having a finite amount of energy, that is correct. There’s only so much energy in the seed and the plant uses this energy up until about the V3 time frame. The energy is the yellow part of the seed (this is the starch used as energy) while the actual seed/embryo is the white spot on the backside of the seed.
As for time, time isn’t necessarily your enemy, but time mixed with adverse growing conditions can harm stand and ultimately yield | |
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plant emergence of a seed
