CARMAN, Man. – Manitoba Agriculture specialist John Heard found an oddity in a corn plot west of Carman.
“We would never see this in a field,” he said of the snorkel corn roots.
“I called a corn specialist I know in Ontario to ask about it. They grow experimental corn in maximum yield studies with the plants in a sandy culture and all the nutrients fed hydroponically through the water. If the oxygen content of the water drops too low, they see roots forming these snorkels into the atmosphere because roots need to breathe.
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“He says they never see it out in the field. It gives us some indication of the kind of extreme wet conditions we’ve had here this summer.”
Heard said the unusual corn growth is called the short term survival, or STS, mechanism. A living organism does what it must do to survive an immediate crisis, despite the negative long-term impact.
In waterlogged soils, plant roots are unable to function. In the case of this snorkel corn, the roots were so desperate for oxygen that they grew along the surface and up in the atmosphere in an attempt to meet the plant’s needs. In a saturated soil, this is what the plant must do to survive.
But, the long-term impact of this STS mechanism is fatal.
Heard explained how the snorkel roots are now killing the corn plant.
“When you took the photo (July 12) those were active roots. They were keeping the plant alive.
“But since then, we’ve had a spell of nine days without rain. Normally, nine days without rain isn’t termed a catastrophe. But it is for these corn plants. All the roots at the surface are now basically dead (as of July 28). They cannot go deep enough to access the moisture.
“The top one foot of soil will store two or three inches of plant-available moisture. In a corn field, that’s a 10 day supply of moisture. So the top one foot of soil is now depleted of all available moisture. But the roots are still up there at the surface.”
The roots will still try to find moisture, Heard said, but will likely not succeed.
The only hope for those plants now would be a regular little rain shower every second day for the balance of the growing season, and that’s not likely to happen.
The roots have already been conditioned to stay at the surface, so that’s where they will remain.
“The prognosis for this field is that even with rainfall, it will fall prone to mid or late season drought. The short term survival mechanism kicked in when it was supposed to early in the season, but now it has no way to fix that root problem.”
