Abstract
Two on-farm experiments (experiments 1 and 2) were conducted to evaluate the suitability of ridge-making seeding and controlled-release fertilizer in alleviating excessive soil moisture stress on silage corn. Two corn cultivars, Cecilia and 31N27 were examined in the study because they were evaluated as flooding-tolerant and flooding-susceptible, respectively, in a previous report. In Experiment 1, a 2-week period of artificial waterlogging treatment using irrigation water was implemented starting 10 weeks after planting. The number of days when a dairy average of underground water table exceeded 200 mm below ground surface was 26 days and 39 days among the growth period of 132 days in Experiment 1 and that of 133 days in Experiment 2, respectively. In both experiments, the application of ridge-making seeding and controlled-release fertilizer increased the dry matter yield of the two cultivars, although the effects in Experiment 2 were not statistically significant because of large variance in dry matter yields among the replications. Comparing the dry matter yields of the two cultivars shows that the results of Experiment 2 were consistent with the flooding tolerances of both types, while those of Experiment 1 showed an opposite pattern.
