On Sun, 20 Apr 2003 05:26:05 -0500, "Gordon Couger"
wrote:

Corn responds worse to hot dry weather than cotton. Cotton will close the
opening in its leaves and wilt in the hottest part of the day if it get
short on moisture and it does the same at night both to conserve moisture. I
would start irrigating when the cotton started to wilt at 2:00 pm. Corn has
no such moisture monument mechanism it just sucks it up until it is gone and
quits and has shallow roots so it can't reach subsoil moisture that cotton
can. If corn ran out of moisture when it was tasseling it would not make
much if any seed. I expect that heavy continuous rain during pollination
would also cause a nice plump ear and no seed.

There's an update to the initial report, a bit more information.
That serious yield losses have occurred, and that the variety
implicated is not GM, would seem clear.


Bihar Bans Monsanto from Selling Seeds
By*Imran Khan
Indo-Asian News Service
April 15, 2003

Monsanto India Ltd, a subsidiary of the US multinational, has been
barred from selling seeds in Bihar for allegedly marketing substandard
products. The action came after farmers complained that Monsanto's
Cargill hybrid 900M maize seeds were substandard or contaminated as
they failed to germinate and much of the winter crop failed,
Agriculture Minister Shivshankar Yadav said.

Monsanto is believed to have sold 700 tonnes of seeds for the winter
crop, promising farmers yields of 80 to 85 quintals per acre. The
actual yield was not even 10 percent of this, according to figures
available with the government.

Bihar has 180,000 acres under maize. Monsanto seeds were planted over
140,000 hectares. The company has been asked to explain its conduct.
Experts from the Rajendra Agriculture University (RAU) would study its
reply before the government decides on cancelling the company's
licence to operate in the state, Yadav added. Monsanto officials
contend the poor yields were due to the unexpected cold weather
earlier this year that had affected all hybrids across much of Bihar
as well as nearby regions.

They pointed out that seed trials during the summer crop of 1996, 1997
and 1998 had produced adequate yields, after which they had been
recommended to the central seed committee for notification in 1999.
Sources in the Bihar government said it was under tremendous pressure
to cancel Monsanto's licence because thousands of farmers were
demanding compensation after being reduced to penury following the
failure of the winter crop. While the loss has not been quantified,
B.N. Jha, a specialist with the Agriculture Technology Management
Agency, said it would run into millions of rupees.

"Farmers sowed Cargil seeds over hundreds of acres in Muzaffarpur
district but the low output has devastated us. We had not faced such a
problem earlier," said an upset Aawadesh Singh, a farmer of Meenapur
village in the district. His tale is similar to that of hundreds of
farmers in over a dozen districts of north Bihar including Samastipur,
Darbhanga, Madhubani and West and East Champaran. Monsanto has said it
would send its teams to the affected districts to study the situation
on the ground.