Ripley County Democrat

Various opinions are prevalent concerning the importance of corn suckers. By many people, suckers are thought to be detrimental to the growth of the plant and are removed when they appear. The purpose of this paper is to present the conclusions reached by experimenters who have worked on the problem. The Agricultural Experiment station of Nebraska has done considerable work on this problem and has presented the results of its work in Bulletin No. 1.

The corn plant is a member of the grass family. One of the important characteristics of the grass plants is the production of many tillers, or suckers, as they are called in the case of the corn plant. Botanically, then, a sucker is a side branch which arises from one of the lower joints of the plant. Through selection in the art of corn breeding the tendency to sucker has been lost to a considerable degree. The present types of corn produce a small amount of suckers.

The development of the tiller is dependent upon various factors. Among the more important ones are variety, rate of planting, and fertility of the soil. Fertile soil and thin planting stimulate suckering.

There is little available data from which to determine the economic value of suckers. However, investigators agree in general that suckers have an economic function to perform the growth of the plant, and that they help to increase the yield where the stand is poor.

The Nebraska experiment covered two years in which the suckers were removed from alternate rows. The results were as follows:

Year	Suckers removed	Suckers left on
	bushels	bushels
1903	68	98
1904	60	74
Average	64	81

The conclusion to be drawn from this experiment are: that suckers are natural divisions of the plant, and will produce ears of corn when the conditions are favorable. Furthermore, the removal of suckers decreases the yield and returns nothing for the labor so expended.

J. C. Logan, Department of Agriculture, State Normal School, Cape Girardeau, Mo.