Great Lakes

A viral disease and a common weed can team up for double trouble in sweet corn.

Marty Williams, an associate professor of crop sciences with the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and an Agricultural Research Service crop ecologist, studied how maize dwarf mosaic virus and wild-proso millet affect yield, according to a news release.

Maize dwarf mosaic, or MDM, is the most common viral disease of U.S. sweet corn.

And wild-proso millet is one of the most troublesome weeds.

Although MDM and weeds commonly stress sweet corn, little was known about their combined effects on the crop.

MDM resistance has been bred into a few sweet corn lines, but most commercial hybrids have little or no resistance to the disease, according to the news release.

Williams compared two MDM-susceptible hybrids that had different weed tolerances.

Even at low levels, the two stressors combined to create problems.

MDM stunts crop growth and reduces its ability to capture resources, such as sunlight for photosynthesis. It also delays development by as much as five days.

"Five days is huge because sweet corn has a narrow window for producing a marketable product," Williams said in the release. "Delays in silk emergence influence maturity, which is a big problem for producers and processors in terms of harvest timing and yield."

Weeds intercept resources, such as light, water and nutrients.

Also participating in the study was Jerald (Snook) Pataky of the University of Illinois.