Corn & Maize
CORN / MAIZE:
Corn, (Zea mays), Or maize, cereal plant of the grass family (Poaceae) and its edible grain.
The domesticated crop originated in the Americas and is one of the most widely distributed of the world’s food crops. Corn is used as livestock feed, as human food, as biofuel, and as raw material in industry.
Maize is rarely used in reference to food products that are made from maize grains, while corn is frequently used for food items.
Commercial classifications, based mainly on kernel texture, include dent corn, flint corn, flour corn, sweet corn, and popcorn. Dent corn is characterized by a depression in the crown of the kernel caused by unequal drying of the hard and soft starch making up the kernel. Flint corn, containing little soft starch, has no depression. Flour corn, composed largely of soft starch, has soft, mealy, easily ground kernels. Sweet corn has wrinkled translucent seeds; the plant sugar is not converted to starch as in other types. Popcorn, an extreme type of flint corn characterized by small hard kernels, is devoid of soft starch, and heating causes the moisture in the cells to expand, making the kernels explode. Improvements in corn have resulted from hybridization, based on crossbreeding of superior inbred strains.
CORN SILAGE:
Corn silage is a high-quality forage crop that is used on many dairy farms and on some beef cattle farms in Tennessee.
Its popularity is due to the high yield of a very digestible, high-energy crop, and the ease of adapting it to mechanized harvesting and feeding. Corn for silage fits ideally into no-till and double-cropping programs.
The object of silage making is to preserve the harvested crop by anaerobic (without oxygen) fermentation. This process uses bacteria to convert soluble carbohydrates into acetic and lactic acid, which “pickles” the crop.
In a well-sealed silo, it can be stored for long periods of time without losing quality. To produce high-quality corn silage, it is important to do a good job in growing, harvesting and preserving the crop.