Rootless Corn Syndrome 2

Here’s an example of rootless corn syndrome. Here the plant is hanging on, barely, see how loose the base of it is This nodal root right here, it looks a lot like a brace root, well the brace roots are an example of nodal roots that are above the ground later in the season This one should be ¾ of an inch below the soil surface that’s where this nodal root belongs and you can tell because of the heat and the drought it’s barely connected to the soil at all and this plant, while it’s still hanging on ….. is hanging on by that one little attachment there and these are nodal roots that should be fanned out and be that long [spreads fingers apart] by now, and, and, covered with fine root hairs coming off of them. This is what heat and sunshine do to nodal roots when they’re exposed to the sun and dry air. And this will even happen to brace roots. You’ll notice in the fall brace roots are coming out of the plant and if it’s hot and dry, they’ll approach the soil surface but won’t penetrate it they’ll stop short of it, whereas if it’s cooler, wetter, everything’s a little happier those brace roots can penetrate the soil surface, but when it’s hot and dry like it’s been here in May and early June in Iowa this is what happens when they stop. Here’s another example of it right here. This guy’s just barely hanging on. He wasn’t going to be… He did have one nodal root doing some business Here you can see the root hairs doing some business, but these were all shut down already. This plant was not going to amount to anything. Here’s another example. See the nodal roots? Here’s the crown right here which the nodal root growth initiates. This crown should be 3/4 of an inch below the soil surface. It’s exposed to the sun. These nodal roots and there’s, there’s there should be a whole, nice fan out of root health. We’ll dig one up...