Reports of tassel wrap have hit headlines as farmers raise concerns about the impact it has on pollination. Bayer Technical Agronomist Lance Tarchione says one concern that has garnered a lot of attention is tassel wrap.
“It’s kind of been a big buzz. And what tassel wrap is, is on some hybrids with a large flag leaf, for some reason, that flag leaf stays wrapped around the tassel,” says Tarchions. “When the tassel starts to shed pollen, you want that pollen to land on the silks and fertilize the kernel and make an ear of corn. If the leaves are still wrapped around the tassel at the top of the plant, it traps that pollen, and it won’t let that pollen get to the silks.”
But that is not the only pollination concern impacting the 2025 corn crop.
“There have been situations where corn plants, the phrase we use is they miss the nick, which means the silking and the pollen shed, get out of sync with each other, and you’ve either got pollen for a few days with no silks, or you’ve got silks for several days with no pollen,” says Tarchione. “The other thing we’ve seen is a lot of what I call poorly developed tassels. They’re just smaller than normal.”
Tarchione adds that if you find pollination problems in your field, contact your seed dealer to document the cases.
