Have you ever wondered how fast corn roots grow? Colleagues at Iowa State University have a number: more than 2 ¾ inches per leaf stage. That's about one inch per day!  Soil cores were taken in the row and in the center between two rows. They used the cores to identify the presence of roots (depth and lateral growth).

Read more on their study in the ISU newsletter article by Sotirios Archontoulis, ISU assistant professor of integrated cropping systems; Mark Licht, ISU cropping systems professor, and Raziel Antonio-Ordonez, ISU Department of Agronomy.

Their research paper is being reviewed for a scientific journal – stay tuned to learn more about corn root growth!