El Fin

The corn research is finished! Well, for the most part. Dr. Kent Gallaher and his dad, Raymond, came down this last Sunday to stay for a couple days and finish the rest of the data-collecting that needed to be done on the corn-only study. And, man, it was nice to see a familiar face, too! Dr. Gallaher (Dr. "G") is one of my professors in the Ag department at ACU, and was the one who set up all this entire research study with Mission Lazarus. And, his dad is a retired agronomist who taught at the University of Florida. So, they came out to the ranch and were all jacked up about the corn. Raymond was the one who had developed all of the different varieties of corn through years and years of experimentation with all different kinds of corn, in order to produce varieties that would produce higher yields in this climate than the local corn varieties. And according to our research, he was successful! We pulled off ears of corn that were almost as long as Dr. G's forearm (and he's butt-tall, so he's got some long forearms). They were, like, monster ears of corn! So, that was really exciting to see, even if it was just corn. That means that Mission Lazarus can start producing those kinds of corn in large quantities, and it will be very high-quality corn to boot.

Thus, the last couple of days, for me, have consisted of going through all that I had done already in the corn with the Gallahers, and then cutting a lot of corn down and weighing it. We ended up harvesting certain-numbered plants out of each variety of corn in all four plots (128 varieties in all, or 32 x 4), then counting the ears, and finally weighing them to get a weight for each variety for comparison. Then, we went back through and selected a few plants from each variety again from only one plot (32 in all), chopped them, then weighed the plants only (without the ears). After that, we weighed the ears with the plant matter. This gives us the weight of the actual ears of each plant compared to the weight of the plant by itself. From this comparison, we can figure out what percentage of the total plant consisted of just the ears. Now, all we have to do is wait for the samples we collected to be dried at Zamarano (an ag college close to Tegucigalpa), and then we will do the same weight measurements again for the dry-weights. Yeah!

Anyway, that probably is TMI for anyone who wasn't involved with the study. But, upon seeing the massive ears of corn coming off of some of those plants, it's exciting for anyone to know that those kinds of ears will be available very soon for Mission Lazarus to grow for human food and animal food. And it will soon be available for locals to grow for food, too, which is even more exciting! So, this is the most recent chronicle from the corn guy, who is excited to be finished with the research, but more excited to see what will come from it. Corn is cool! It's cornool!

-- Dylan Wann