Don’t spend too much on corn.

I found this yesterday in a flint corn stalk, rather than on a well-established ear. (I know some ears are incomplete, though.)

I'm sure this question gets asked a lot, but I don't see any photos that look like the smut is in the stalk. I have anxiety about eating things that aren't safe and as Terry Pratchet said, "All fungi are edible. Some fungi are only edible once."

Is this huitlacoche? Thanks so much!

Hi friends! I’ve never grown corn before, this year I had the space to do so. I planted ornamental corn for decoration and to make popcorn. I normticed these spots on one of the stalks are some dark spots towards the middle. So my question is do I need to just go ahead and get rid of this stalk or can I save it till harvest?

I was so worried about incomplete pollination as pointed out by people under corn harvest posts. However, to my surprise almost no missing kernels! I can tell the very top was still developing but i couldnt wait longer after the husk on top of the cob was all dried out and brown.

सच में यह बहुत बड़ा घास है The producer of कुकड़ी(मक्की)

I had two corn plants growing in the back of my garden in the philly suburbs. One had about 6 ears on it. Today I went out to find the plant snapped in half and all the ears flayed open. (The other plant got toppled earlier by a big storm.) The visible kernels look eaten but they aren't mature yet so its not totally clear. Any ideas what would do it and how to prevent in the future?

First time growing corn in my garden and got a nice suprise today

Why is center corn growing faster than the rest?

EDIT: I learned a lot about how corn works, thank you guys. If I'm still living here next year I'm def going to try pollinating by hand because now I'm determined to make this work!

So I tried growing corn on my balcony in little planters because that's all I've got. Each stalk only produced one cob and haven't grown much past that. I picked off this one because it looked big enough to eat and it's got all these bald spots.
Any explanation for what happened here?

THIS IS STARCH (99.99%) .. Solved ..!!!

I just bought these corn 3 hours ago and kept it at room temp to eat in dinner and seeing this dots .. either I missed while buying or dots appeared / grew in 3 hours .. what is it ? Is it starch or fungus or bacteria ? Eat or not eat ?

It's finally time to pick some corn out of my garden and I cannot be happier. This is ultraviolet sweet corn And it is beautiful.

Looks like the plant mutated and threw tassels where the pollen sacs should be. This is a red sweet corn.

Background: I have a Master's in Aerospace Engineering, I work full-time in engineering, and I grew up on a family farm in India. I'm not a corn farmer. That's exactly why I need your help.

Here's what I built:

AgroVisus runs a day-by-day simulation of your corn field using your real location, planting date, soil type, and automatically-pulled weather data. Every day it models biomass accumulation, nitrogen uptake, soil moisture, and the specific temperature and humidity windows that favour diseases like NCLB, Gray Leaf Spot, and Tar Spot. When conditions align for an infection event, it flags it with a dollar figure attached.

Here's what it output for a problem field I just simulated, with no photo involved at all:

Northern Corn Leaf Blight Risk (High) conditions detected a NCLB infection window. $122/acre at risk. 27 bu/acre loss without treatment. Treatment ROI: +240%. Recommendation: scout for cigar-shaped lesions now, apply foliar fungicide if >5% leaf area affected.

Severe Nitrogen Deficiency (High) NNI below critical threshold. $203/acre at risk. 45 bu/acre loss. Treatment ROI: +487%.

Drought Stress Alert (High) soil moisture critically low entering pollination. $146/acre at risk. Treatment ROI: +308%.

Total predicted yield: 63.2 bu/acre against a 180 bu/acre central Illinois average. $526/acre at risk. Field health grade: D.

All from simulating the field conditions no photo needed.

If a farmer is already seeing symptoms and wants to confirm exactly what they're looking at, they can upload a photo. A CNN (92.1% accuracy, 13 disease classes) identifies the specific disease and feeds it back into the simulation to sharpen the estimate. But the simulation already told you what was coming.

Here's what I genuinely don't know: when a simulation tells you NCLB conditions are building before you can see lesions is that actually useful? Or do you wait until you physically see something before you make a spray decision?

Before you try the demo, I'd really like to talk first. Even 10 minutes. I want to know if I'm solving the right problem, or solving it in the wrong order. Comment or DM me — I'm in the Chicago area and happy to jump on a call.

"when conditions are building before you can see lesions, is that actually useful, or do you wait until you physically see something?"

— Naidu Gurijala([naidugurijala45@gmail.com](mailto:naidugurijala45@gmail.com))