For Michael Hall, short-stature corn isn’t just another breeding project — it’s a once-in-a-career breakthrough.
Hall, recipient of the 2024 National Association for Plant Breeding Private Sector Impact Award and retired Bayer Crop Science corn breeder, first encountered the potential of the crop in 2016, when a tornado ripped through one of his test farms. “The manager called and told me the trials were destroyed,” Hall recalls. “But when we went to check, the only experiments that survived were our short-stature plots. That was the moment I knew we were onto something.”
From there, Hall spent years walking fields — personally visiting dozens of trial sites each season across the Corn Belt. By 2017, he says, “I came back from that second year convinced this was exceptionally compelling. I wasn’t thinking about retirement anymore. I knew I had to see this through.”
The crop’s resilience has been tested by nature again and again. During the devastating 2020 derecho, which wiped out nearly a quarter of Iowa’s corn, short-stature hybrids stood tall. “We published a peer-reviewed paper on it,” Hall says. “But what struck me most was talking to a farmer who lived through it. He told me: ‘Ten minutes after lunch with my family, we were in a hurricane — 140 mile-per-hour winds.’ That’s what growers are facing. Once you experience that, it changes your life.”
Beyond weather resilience, Hall sees short-stature corn as a gateway to solving agriculture’s toughest challenge: nitrogen management. “Nitrogen is the biggest issue in corn production — environmentally and economically,” he explains. “The future is about integrating breeding with sensors, application technology, and system design to intensify production sustainably.”
For Hall, the project reflects the evolving role of plant breeding itself. “It’s not just about the genetics anymore. It’s about breeding with other technologies — interrelated, integrated, and smarter. That’s where the future of farming is headed.”
