Effects of plastic mulch, sowing date and cultivar on the yield and maturity of forage maize grown under marginal climatic conditions in Northern Ireland
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The effects of growing forage maize (Zea mays) with or without plastic mulching treatments on the dry‐matter (DM) yield, cob yield, DM content and starch content was investigated in Northern Ireland in 1996 and 1997. Cultivars differing in maturity characteristics were sown in spring at a range of dates in three replicated plot experiments and were used to compare the effects of two plastic mulches and an untreated control: one plastic mulch completely covered the rows (floating); the other had holes punched in the plastic, through which the plants grew (punch). Between April and October in 1996 and 1997, the Ontario heat units (OU) received were above average at 2489 and 2660 respectively; in those years without plastic mulches, the earliest maturing cultivar, Melody, yielded 11·0 and 13·6 t DM ha–1, with dry‐matter contents of 214 and 215 g kg–1 respectively. Mean daily increases in soil and air temperature under plastic mulches of up to 6°C and 11°C, respectively, were closely related to solar radiation. Under plastic mulches, 15% fewer OU were required to reach silking, and 33% more OU were available between silking and harvest. Meaned over three experiments, two years and three cultivars, plastic mulches, when compared with the unmulched control, increased maize yield from 12·0 to 14·7 t DM ha–1, cob yield from 3·7 to 6·8 t DM ha–1, dry‐matter content from 230 to 270 g kg–1 and starch content from 198 to 272 g kg–1. The effect of plastic mulch on the maturation of the crop was greatest at earlier sowings. In 1997, plants from an early sowing date (10 April) that had recently emerged through the punch plastic mulch were damaged by frost, whereas those in the floating plastic mulch plots were unaffected. When the floating plastic mulch was left on after the six‐ to eight‐leaf stage of the first‐early maize cultivar Hudson, the plants were physically damaged and the yield reduced, but DM and starch contents continued to increase. The increases in yield and dry‐matter content under the plastic mulch were greater in Diamant (second‐early cultivar) than in Melody (first‐early cultivar). It was concluded that, under marginal climatic conditions, plastic mulches ought to be used to improve the reliability of early cultivars rather than growing later maturing cultivars.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".