Twin-Row Corn - Monosem

Photo: Jim Patrico
Twin-Row Corn
An idea whose time has come,
or a fad that will never become a trend?
By Jim Patrico
Tom Evans, of Great Plains Manufacturing, inspects the handiwork of one of his company’s twin-row planters.
It was a leap of faith,” says Jonathan Wyttenbach,
about his family jumping into twin-row corn four
years ago.
The Wyttenbach family (father, Jack, mother,
Sharon, and sons Jonathan and Joel) of Sauk City,
Wis., wanted to increase yields on their 850 acres of
continuous corn without a lot of equipment changes.
They had read about twin rows and were intrigued.
Coincidentally, they also were in the market for
a new planter and decided they would buy a Great
Plains twin-row rig. If twin rows didn’t work as they
hoped, they could reconfigure the planter for 30-inch
rows. Nothing would be lost.
After three seasons with the new planter, the
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Wyttenbachs weren’t sure whether their leap of faith
had landed them on solid ground. They had no hard
yield data to compare their twin rows with 30-inch
rows. But they suspected that neighbors were doing as
well or better on 30-inch rows. They also suspected
the neighbors were laughing up their sleeves at the
early adopters and their funny rows of corn.
It’s not surprising the Wyttenbachs felt a little
out of the mainstream. Although the twin-row corn
concept has been around for years, it has not caught
on with many producers. Indeed, there are only two
major manufacturers of twin-row planters: Great
Plains Manufacturing and Monosem. Universities
have done few studies of twin-row corn. Seed ▶
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John Engram (right) has planted twin-row corn for 17 years. He uses a Monosem planter (foreground).
companies have tested twin-row corn for years, but
they don’t talk much about the results.
Without many independent studies to gauge the
effectiveness of twin rows, the Wyttenbachs decided
to conduct their own make-or-break test of twin
rows. In spring 2009, they configured half of their 12row
planter on twins and half on 30-inch rows. They
kept seeding rates, fertility and everything else the
same. The only difference was twins versus singles—
across all 850 acres.
The results have the Wyttenbachs smiling: an
average 4.1-bushel-per-acre yield advantage for twin
rows compared to 30-inch rows. “That’s about 3,200
more bushels of corn. At $4 a bushel, that’s $12,800,”
says Jonathan. “Pretty exciting.”
The Wyttenbachs’ experiment will not convince
everyone that twin rows are the next big thing. It was
just one test on one farm.
But AgriGold is adding some fuel to the fire this
spring. The Illinois-based seed company did its own
twin-row trials in 2009 at 37 locations in the South,
Mid-South and Corn Belt with a variety of hybrids
and genetic families. Twin rows were planted side by
side with 30-inch rows.
MW-2 the progressive farmer / march 2010 ▶ your FarM
The result: “There was a yield advantage with
twin rows,” says Mike Kavanaugh, AgriGold
agronomy manager. Twin rows achieved an
advantage in 69.2% of the fields, with an average
advantage of 4.9 bushels per acre.
Protocol for the trials was four planting rates
(28,000 to 43,000 seeds per acre) with 8-inch spacing
on the twin rows. The results for most hybrids
indicated that the more population, the more yield
advantage for twin rows over 30-inch rows. A Family
B plot, for instance, showed no advantage for twin
rows at 28,000 seeds, a 6.4-bushel advantage at
33,000, a 7.3-bushel advantage at 38,000 and an 11bushel
advantage at 43,000.
Twin-row crops might do better at higher
seeding rates because the spacing gives them more
room, both for root growth and light utilization,
Kavanaugh says. Different hybrids might do better
in twin rows because of certain characteristics like
flexible ear types, which adjust in length at various
populations and row spacings.
2009 was a year with plenty of moisture. Future
trials will test how twin rows perform in the stress
of dry years, Kavanaugh says. ▶
Photo: Jim Patrico

Photo: Jim Patrico
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The distinctive diamond pattern of twin-row corn gives
plants room to grow and absorb sunlight.
AgriGold’s 2009 tests are noteworthy because there
is so little literature available to the public about twinrow
corn yield trials. Iowa State University planted
twin-row test plots at its Armstrong Research Farm
beginning in 2002, and over three seasons found little
yield difference between twin rows and 30-inch rows.
Ohio State University and the University of
Maryland also have dabbled in twin-row trials. The
University of Illinois did a study of twin rows for John
Deere in 2008, says agronomist Emerson Nafziger,
and found “not very big differences” between the
performance of twin-row and 30-inch corn.
“There has not been much independent research,”
he adds. “[But from the research that has been
done,] it’s been hard to see much of an advantage
for twin rows.”
Nafziger has not made up his mind about twin
rows but says their purported agronomic advantages
are suspect. For instance, he sees only “a modest
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improvement in spacing” when going from twin rows
to 30-inch rows. As for light utilization, Nafziger says
twin rows may have a small advantage over 30-inch
corn “maybe at knee height, but not at shoulder or
head height.”
Planter maker John Deere has not offered a twinrow
planter because it does not see an agronomic
advantage in most regions for its customers, says
Andy Seibert, a John Deere agronomist in the
strategic marketing section. “We have done our own
study and reviewed 42 other replicated studies. Half
show an advantage for twin row and half show an
advantage for 30-inch rows. We are really open to
new ideas. But so far twin rows have not been proven
to work. That’s not to say they won’t work one day,
maybe with new genetics. But not now.”
Kinze Manufacturing did make a twin-row planter
from 2007 to 2008. But in 2009, it surveyed 1,000
farmers about twin row and other issues and found
that only 1% of corn planters sold in the United States
were twin rows, says Luc van Herle, national sales
manager. So Kinze discontinued its twin-row line.
“We do answer a lot of questions at farm shows
about twin row,” he says. “But the advantages it
might have are in the myth category right now.”
John Engram Jr., of Lakeside Ag LLC in Sikeston,
Mo., doesn’t believe the twin-row advantage is a
myth. He farms about 3,000 acres of twin-row
corn, soybeans, milo and cotton and has planted
twin-row crops and conducted plot research for 17
years. (He also is a dealer for Monosem vacuum
planters and consults with his planter customers
and other twin-row producers to help them use the
system more effectively.)
Engram has conducted both small and large plot
yield trials on his own farm and on some of his
neighbors’ farms (some with the help of the University
of Missouri), and has participated in trials run by
various seed companies.
“Variety selection is one of the keys to optimal
twin-row performance,” Engram says. “Some
varieties of corn show little difference in yield with
twin-row planting, while others have shown up to a
34-bushel-per-acre yield increase in our side-by-side
comparisons,” he observes.
Engram recognizes that there are some who
dismiss the twin-row idea. “The twin-row concept is
not magic,” he says. “Just pulling a twin-row planter
through your fields won’t necessarily increase your
yields; you have to use the whole system correctly.
After many years of trial and error we have
developed a system that has consistently increased
yields on our farm.” ⦁