STATISTICAL MODEL FOR THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAIZE KERNEL ORIENTATION AND SEED LEAF AZIMUTH

Hand-planted plots of across-row-oriented corn seeds (Zeamays L.) produce highly structured leaf canopies and have shown significant yield advantage over randomly planted plots in prior studies. For further investigation of the phenomenon by simulation, the objective of this study was to develop a probabilistic model for the correlation between seed orientation and initial plant orientation. In greenhouse trials, the azimuthal orientation of kernels of four different hybrids was recorded at planting. At collar setting of the seed leaf, the orientation of the seed leaf was determined and the angular data subjected to the analytical methods of circular statistics. The results indicate that the correlation between seed azimuth and seed leaf azimuth can be described by a von Mises distribution. The probabilistic seed to seed leaf azimuth model described herein may be implemented in simulation models to investigate the effect of canopy architecture, canopy closure and light interception efficiency of corn under conditions of seed oriented planting.