Abstract

Only during recent decades has corn production in the eastern Great Plains expanded from relatively small areas of bottom‐land ground along rivers to the more extensive, upland, claypan soils of the area. Droughty conditions in July and August coupled with the claypan subsoils found in the area result in limited plant‐available moisture storage in these soils during critical reproductive growth stages of full‐season corn. However, the introduction of short‐season corn hybrids, which reach reproductive stages earlier than full‐season hybrids, presented the potential to avoid or lessen the effects mid‐summer droughts.No‐till corn often yields less than corn grown in a tilled system (Vetsch et al., 2007; Iragavarapu and Randall, 1995; Kladivko et al., 1986) with less N uptake in the grain (Iragavarapu and Randall, 1995) and requiring more N for maximum yield and profit (Stecker et al., 1995). In a review, DeFelice et al. (2006) reported that lower corn yields with no‐till occur in cold climates or on poorly drained soils. This agreed with Al‐Kaisi et al. (2015), who found that corn yield and economic penalty were greater with poorly drained soils in northern locations. On poorly drained claypan soils, no‐till corn yields are often lower than with tillage (Sweeney