Kernel Counts

Out of morbid curiosity, I went out into the fertilizer plots yesterday (7/25/2016) just to have a look at the ears and took a sample of 5 ears from each of the first four plots and counted kernels. Keep in mind that kernel counting to estimate yield is notoriously inaccurate and we took only the first replicate but I thought I'd share what we had. The 100-0-0 was highest while the 50-0-0 was lowest (also statistically different)  - interestingly the 140-0-85 and 140-0-0 were in the middle and not statistically different from the other treatments. This may be soil related (first two plots may be stronger soil) but is a good illustration that nitrogen isn't the only determination of yield even in a very small space. It is also interesting, that if we compare plots 1 and 3, an increase of 180% of nitrogen input only resulted in a 9% increase in kernels. Granted this is 1 rep (we have a total of ten reps) and we really need to cut the corn to get all the results, but it did make me think a bit.