LPM 121: Fodder Production and Grassland Management (1+1)

BABY CORN
(Zea Mays)

• Recently a type of maize called baby corn is considered as a dual purpose crop. It is cultivated for the young tender cobs for the use as vegetable, salad, preparation of soup etc. The tender cobs are delicious and highly nutritive.
• It is a short duration crop of 65 days. After the harvest of the tender cob, the fresh green stover forms a very juicy, palatable green fodder, most liked by cattle, particularly dairy animals.
• Baby corn yields as much as 24-26 tonnes of green fodder per hectare, besides yielding 4560 kg of young cob per hectare. The baby corn contains 12.71% of crude protein, and 12.50 mg vitamin C/ 100 g .
• The surplus baby corn stover can very well be converted into a nutritive silage, preferably by pit method, where, surface pits of convenient size may be dug up, plastered with cement mortar on all sides including the bottom and the freshly cut baby corn stover can be used for silage making.

Package of practices:

• Season throughout the year, under irrigated condition.
• Soil well drained sandy clay loam soils.
• Land preparation plough the land with tractor attached with mould board plough followed by disc harrow, pulverise the soils, level and form ridges and furrows at 60 cm apart.
• Seed rate
  • 10-15 kg/ha , use one seed only per hill; always use certified seeds.
  • Spacing 60 x 20 cm.
• Manures and Fertilizers
  • Farm yard Manure / compost @ 12.5 t/ha plus 150 : 62.5 : 50 kg N, P₂O₅, K₂O / ha, of which apply 75 kg N and entire dose of P₂O₅ and K₂O as basal as band application, just prior to sowing seeds. The remaining 75 kg N will be applied 20 days after sowing (DAS).
• After cultivation
• The crop needs one weeding on 20 DAS followed by slight earthing up. The practice has to be followed in the following sequence:
  1. Hoeing on 20 DAS
  2. Top dressing of N, the next day
  3. Slight earthing up
  4. Irrigation.
• Irrigation
  • Irrigation to a depth of 2.5 cm immediately after sowing the seed.
  • Life irrigation on 4-5 DAS. Subsequent irrigations will be given once in 7-8 days; there by requiring 6-7 irrigations and the total water requirement will be around 400 mm.
• Plant protection
  • There will not be any serious incidence of pests and diseases and therefore, generally, the crop does not require any chemical spray.
• Harvest
  • The tassels have to be eliminated / removed as and when emerged to avoid pollination, fertility and grain formation. The young cob which is the economic part will be harvested 3-4 times at an interval of 4 -5 days. The average young cob yield will be around 4.56 t/ha.
  • After the completion of harvest of the tender cobs, the green stover is harvested periodically and fed to cattle. On an average, the stover yield will be 24 - 26 t/ha. Under excess / surplus situations, the green stover is converted into a nutritive silage for the supply of green roughages during lean periods.