Corn Production in the Tropics: The Hawaii Experience

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University of Hawaii, College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, 2003. — 74 pp. ISBN 1-929325-15-0.Tropical islands have an annoying way of providing a suitable climate to grow any plant without providing the market conditions to make it economically viable. This is certainly true of corn production in Hawaii. Economic production of corn in Hawaii, as in the rest of the world, rests firmly on the availability of superior adapted varieties, excellent crop land, competent farmers, and a reliable market. Only in recent years have these elements begun to come together in Hawaii. When the project of creating this production manual was begun (around 1975), the document owed much to Sam Aldrich’s excellent but Corn Belt–based Modern Corn Production. Today it owes as much to Web sites (see References), but in general it is patterned on the treatment of the subject by Aldrich.Table of Contents: Corn and Its Environment. The Corn Plant. Hybrids and Varieties. Land Preparation and Planting. Fertilizers. Water. Weed Control. Diseases and Pests. Harvesting and the Harvested Crop. The Corn Seed Industry. Appendix. References and supplementary reading. Appendix. Some favorite recipes for Hawaii’s supersweet corn.