 I don't think I need a lot of coffee production. As I mentioned this morning, I have a pension and research for solitude in grain costs, small range, as well as a stationary coach. But I think the one important thing to mean is to share with you some of the results that we have been obtaining from a couple of studies looking at the relationship between plant intensity and plant intensity in corn. Over the last four years, I have conducted, me and my graduate students, Damiano, have conducted a study looking at the impact of plant intensity and plant intake, not only on corn yield, but mainly on athratoxy. So today I'm going to be just presenting the yield results and he will have plenty of opportunities to share with you the athratoxy results. While we are looking at this, we are trying to figure out how we can adjust corn management to review the risk of athratoxy in corn. And what are the factors that take that role? Not only our management factors on athratoxy, but also the environmental factors, the weather conditions during the season that might promote athratoxy in corn. Along with that, I will present Aira for this year. It started with conducting two locations in Alabama, looking and comparing drought tolerant, a drought tolerant hybrid, one of the Acomas hybrids, combining against the conventional corn hybrids. It's really, I mean, can we increase yield using these new hybrids? And what are really the yield components that are changing between these Acomas hybrids and the conventional hybrids? All of the results and all of these studies have been conducted and they're dry land conditions. There is no irrigation. Why is that? We have a big percentage of corn farmers that is field farming dry land. That's one of the reasons we would like to have some data for them. The other reason is that when I started this study in 2010, two of the research stations that I chose didn't have irrigation capability. Now they do and perhaps I would have to maybe continue the study and the modification or more, make some modifications, but it was pretty much, I conducted the test with the infrastructure that we have at that time. I would like to start, I always like to provide a little bit of background information of why the, the hybrids are responding in one or another manner. They are making a signals that I don't, they don't have sound from me. Okay, good. So first of all, I want to start with this. How the corn and the modern hybrids are responding to increase increments in planting densities? If we look at this graph that contains information from all US and Canada, this is how much the response to increases in planting density has been over, I would say the last 30 years. In 1985, at a planting density of 23,000 seeds per acre, the average yield was one of five bushels. When they look at 2011, and they were using 30,000 seeds per acre, the average yield was 160. So the rate, the yield, the rate of yield increase per year based on increases on planting density has been two bushels per year. And I'd like to thank also my colleagues by introducing and the comparison of all hybrids and modern hybrids. Why we can increase yield by increasing planting density with the hybrids that we have today. So and this graph is really, I like it because it's really explaining what's happening with our modern hybrids when we increase planting density and what happened if we use, let's say all hybrids and we try to increase planting density. Sometimes we don't like to take risks and we try to perhaps stick with what we know, with the things that we used to do as far as management, but now we have hybrids with new genetics, hybrid that has been selected under perhaps some stress conditions. And that's why they are performing much better and they are providing a much higher response to increases in planting density like this graph is showing. So the genetics on the new hybrids, especially improvements in a stress tolerance, especially at high planting density allow those hybrids to yield more than all hybrids. But I'd like to also to point out that not every hybrid is going to have the same response to increases in planting density and my colleagues were showing that earlier. Why, what is happening with those plants when we increase density? What are the physiological changes that are occurring? One of them and my colleagues mentioned this is light interception. Higher light interception is occurring as a result of higher leaf area as the population increase. I remember when I was looking at preparing this talk, I remember my plots and I remember how those corn plants in the plot with the higher planting density was looking in relation to the lower planting density. The leaves were much more upright on the higher planting density than on the lower planting density. So more upright leaves enhances photosynthetic rate near the ear. Therefore, photosynthesis increases then seed number increases. That's one of the reasons because one of the ways the plant is compensating and is resulting into higher yield. Studies in Minnesota by these colleagues found that the maximum intersected photosynthetic after radiation. Look at this, it was 95% occur at the highest plant population tested and they were testing 47,000. So those plants at higher plant density were able to intercept much more light that that's gonna result into energy, into carbohydrates and also increase photosynthesis. There are some downsides of increases in plant population that we need to take into account and one of them is the diameter of the stalks. When you increase the planting density you will have plants with much smaller diameter, a stalk diameter and that's gonna perhaps put your plants at risk for lodging. However, the modern, the new hybrid, the modern corn hybrids have much lower lodging percentage than the old hybrids. What else is happening with those plant densities increments? In the past, as plant density increased, there was a big gap between the silking time and the flowering time and you know that it has to be a synchronism between these two moments, okay? So and that when there was an increased silking, sorry, when the silking was delayed relative to antithesis, the pollination was reduced so the final yield was impacted. Today, modern corn hybrids being bred for increased tolerance to stresses are showing a much narrow interval between silking and flowering. So that is favoring higher populations. So there is a much narrow time between these two events and synchronism. The other studies have shown also an impact on test weight when we increase planting density and higher test weight at higher planting densities. With that background information I would like to go into the results of these two tests that I told you. Those tests were conducted one in Fairhope, Alabama, South Alabama, and the other test was conducted or is being conducted in Prattville, Central Alabama. We started the Fairhope test in 2010, so we have more data. We started only two years ago in Prattville. So what's happening when I have on these graphs here is on the X axis I have the planting densities that we were evaluating and here is the yield and the different colored bars represent the two different planting dates that we were testing. Those planting dates we tended, we wanted to be one month apart. So the standard we were testing, the black bars represent the standard planting date at that location and the hatch bar represent the corn that was planted a month later. That's what we wanted. I want you to see two things. The first one is how different and how low the yield from 2011 was compared to 2012 and 2013. And some of my colleagues might say, Brenda, why you are showing this? And I'm showing this is because I want, and you know that the risk that you take when you farm dry land, okay, that's the first thing. There was no response, of course, to plant population under this condition and no matter what your density was, the plants were not responding. Why? There was no water. There was no water. And remember, my colleagues were pointing this thing out. We see a benefit by increasing planting density when we have some resources. If you have irrigation, yes, you will see a much more yield benefits. There's sunlight, but then if there was no water there, there was no response. However, you see that we have much higher yield when we delay the planting. And I will explain later why. When we look at the data from 2012, data from 2013, and I will have a slide later on, the data from 2014, we see that there is exponential increase in yield as we increase the planting density, even under those dry land conditions, okay? So, but then I would like also, you see the yield increase as your plant density increase. The biggest question is, are those significant differences and are we making some money with those changes? If we look at 2012, this graph, no significant differences between the 20,000, 22,000 rate compared to the 26,000 rate, and also there were no significant differences in yield between the 26,000 and the 36,000. However, there was a significant differences in yield between the 22,000 and the 32,000 and the 30,000. So, there was a yield increase when I moved from 20,000 to 30,000 at that particular year, at that particular location. Let's look at the situation in 2013. You see that there are differences in the way this corn responds as in terms of planting date between these two years, okay? In 2012, there were not really significant differences between these two planting dates. You see that the bars are pretty much the same. But then when we look at 2013, the later planting day had much lower yield than the earlier or the standard planting date for that location. And when we planted these tests using the standard planting date, you see a much better response of increasing planting density than planting that crop later. And all of that is related to water. To the rainfall distribution and the rainfall amount that we have during those critical periods of the growing season. I wanna show you a little bit of the weather data from these three years. This graph on the top represents the deviations, this zero line is the normal or the historic average of precipitation for those particular months, okay? And the bars represent either precipitation that was below normal or below average. And the positive bars represent precipitation that was above average. So let's look at 2011. That was this year where we have this terrible drought. And you see that all the precipitation, except for July, were above average, below average. The same issue with 2012, but only on the months of March and April is where we have precipitation below average. And then May and June that are usually the months where we have especially June when silking a car at that location, we have precipitation above average. So perhaps that's why, if we look at this bar, perhaps that's why the April 13th corn, perhaps a little bit better than the 2020 of March corn, because during that year, we have June precipitation, main precipitation above average, okay? When we look at maximum temperature, this is another variable that is very important, especially during the silking and grain filling period, with if we look at 2011, all the maximum temperature was almost above historic average for all that year. If we look at 2012, we have maximum temperature above historic average from March to May, and then it decreased from June to August. Those things might explain those differences also in yield. So here I'm summarizing the results in terms of the relations that I established, trying to explain those differences in yield, and I wanna focus on the 2012 and 2013. In 2012, precipitation above average in May, June and August, that was what happened. Maximum temperature below average from May to August, and this might explain the similarities between, the similarities in yield between these planting dates. Of course, the May and June precipitation in 2012, favoring the later planting. If we look at 2013 that I wanna contrast these two years in terms of the differences in response to planting date, precipitation above average temperature was observed between May to August. Okay, so we have decent precipitation. When we look at maximum temperature, we have maximum temperature above average in the month of June. So I feel like that heat during the May, during the month of June really impacted silking and a little bit of the grain development for this later planted corn, the April 18th. That's what I think it happens. And then these are the results for 2014, and you see that these two graphs are very similar. So that means that these two years really behave in a very similar fashion with the early planting date or the standard planting date, out yielding or having higher yield than the later planting date. And also you see the response to increased planting density. I would like to move a little bit to the results from Plathville. Again, I have only two years of this test. And I wanna point out again, the differences or the impact that planting density have on your yield and planting date have on your yield. I know it's difficult to follow and to know what the weather conditions are going to be for the rest of the season when you plant your crop. You don't have much clue when you plant in March, what's gonna happen in June, especially in this part of the country when we have this huge variability in rainfall. But look at this is 2013, okay? And these are the differences in yield when I planted at this location using the standard planting date compared to planting this crop a month later. But the situation was completely the opposite when I look at my results from 2014. Again, all of this is related to, a lot of that was related to the distribution and amount of rainfall and the temperature between these two years. Again, if we look at the response of increased planting density at this particular location, this particular, these two years, you see that there was, yes, an increase in yield as we increase the planting density. In 2014, it's very interesting the results and we were just finishing processing the data few weeks ago. You see that there is a very distinct variation between the two low planting densities with respect to the two highest planting densities. You see that there was a much higher response to increase planting densities in 2014 than 2013 for that particular location. I wanna move and I wanna use perhaps the next three minutes sharing with you the results from this year evaluating one of the pioneered aquamax hybrids compared to one of the conventional hybrids. These results are from Fairhope and I think the graph is very self-explanatory. The black bars are the bars that represent the yield from the aquamax hybrid and the red bars represent the conventional hybrid that is not being marked as drought tolerant. So look at the differences in yield when I look at the 24,000 seeding rate compared to the 28,000 seeding rate. So there was, just by looking only at the aquamax yield, there was not really much yield increase when I compare these two seeding rates, okay? But when I look at 28,000 compared to 32,000, there was a 14 bushels yield increase by increasing seeding rate for that particular hybrid. But it's also very interesting to see the yield differences between each one of those seeding rates when I look at the aquamax hybrid compared to the conventional hybrid. So the differences are really significant. What is causing, what is driving those changes in yield, those differences in yield, not only by planting density, but also between these two hybrids. And I highlighted here, so if we look at year length, okay, especially at the 28,000 and the 32,000, the aquamax hybrid was much larger than the conventional hybrid. When we look at year diameter, look at the differences in yield diameter between the aquamax and the Pioneer 33D14, okay? So bigger year diameter, and when I look at the number of grains per year, there was a larger number, a more higher number of grains per year coming from the aquamax compared to the 33D14. Let's look at Pradvio, and this data is similar to Fairhope. You see the biggest and the highest yield response from the aquamax hybrid to increase the plant population compared to the 33D14 hybrid. Again, what was happening in Pradvio, so we saw a bigger year diameter from the aquamax hybrid, and we also saw a higher number of grains per area coming from the aquamax hybrid, but only at the 28,000 seeding rate. And that's all that I have for you. I wanna acknowledge the funding that I have received to conduct these two studies, and I forgot to include the logo from Pioneer, but they have been very supportive also of those studies. And with that, I will be happy to take questions if you have.