Corn has to be one of the most productive, reliable, and valuable plants grown on the face of the Earth. Year after year, corn farmers provide to the world an abundance of nutrition, energy and a resource that seems to have almost unlimited uses.

But a little too much rain, or not enough, days too hot, nights too cold, hail, and even wind can put a drain on a farmer’s pocketbook. In the last 18 months, derecho strength winds have been a talker with farmers everywhere.

Corn researchers are taking note and doubling down on work that will improve standability and help develop hybrids that stand a better chance when high winds blow through.

“There’s no question we’re in for bad winds every single year anymore,” said Bob Miller, owner and president of Miller Hybrids, of Kalona. “It’s just reality.”

Miller has put a priority on research that will identify corn hybrids that will better sustain the high winds that have become more commonplace in recent years.

“I want them to produce corn hybrids that are more stable across a range of different conditions,” he said. “They’re easier to keep healthy.”

What this may mean is that farmers will see corn hybrids that are shorter, but more upright in the canopy. One of the best tools to combat the wind might just be better access to sunlight, thus increasing overall plant health and strength. That doesn’t mean lower plant populations, but simply making the most of available sunlight.

“It’s really important to get the most light down to the most important area for photosynthetic activity,” Miller said.

For decades, research throughout the industry has led to taller and taller corn plants. As the ability to resist high winds becomes a greater focus, that trend could be topping out. The goal is now to find hybrids that can tolerate higher winds by, in essence, making the leaves less of a wind-friendly target.

As described on the Miller Hybrids website, better resistance to derecho winds can come from a “medium-short corn with a pineapple leaf structure, which will allow light to easily penetrate to the ear leaf. The ear leaf has been found to be the most productive leaf to feed the ear.”

Both the leaf design and the smaller plant create a profile that doesn’t “catch the wind.”

Miller, who holds a doctorate in plant breeding and genetics from the University of Illinois, grew up on a farm in Ohio and is still a farm boy at heart when visiting with people. He sees the challenges that farmers face and wants to help with better research techniques to find and identify the necessary plant traits for a better overall crop.

“By changing the way that you select, so that you can identify the hybrids that stand the best, you can harvest crops that everybody else would walk away from,” Miller said. “Last year we harvested a plot that nobody else in the world would have, but we still did.”

One of the company’s research plots was in the heart of the 2020 derecho along U.S. Highway 30 in east central Iowa.

The derecho provided a test that researchers never could have imagined when the crop went into the ground in the spring of 2020, but the harvest results gave reassurance that they were on the right track for the future.

Known as M11-66 the hybrid reportedly “stood and yielded extremely well compared to other hybrids being tested,” at the same time.

Miller does not promise miracles. Sadly, there will be storms that are too much for any crop, but by building better resistance, he hopes to help farmers have a fighting chance when the high winds blow.