Hawaii Island: Hawaiian Ocean View, District of Kau

These seed lots were from a small population of corn plants grown in containers in 2024 at our Moana Experimental Farm at Ocean View in the Kau District of Hawaii island.  The farm is located on a recent lava flow area of Mauna Loa at an elevation of about 600 m (2000 ft).  Growing and conditions there were harsh with frequent periods of dry soil in the containers, low organic soil content and strong trade winds. Most of the plants were uprooted or destroyed by Hurricane Hone. 

The plants grown at the farm were seedlings from several Mexican landraces of nitrogen fixing corn. With the wide separation and small number of plants at the farm site most of the cobs had few if any kernels.  The seeds offered here are from the most productive plants and are the products of open and hand pollination attempts, yet they appear to closely resemble the seeds of the landraces planted in the containers.  There does not appear to be significant cross breeding based on the appearance of the kernels.

All of seed producing plants formed arial roots typical of nitrogen fixing corn but none produced mucus, probably because of the xeric growing conditions.  While there was a small yield of seeds from these experiments the parent plants survived and were productive.  The seeds may be best suited for additional field trials in areas with similar adverse growing conditions.

Germination test data is not available for these seed lots.  Testing may be initiated before the next growing season in 2025.