Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
425B Smyth Hall Mail Code 0403
Blacksburg, Virginia  24061
540/231-4490 FAX: 540/231-3075
egrucker@vt.edu

January 17, 2017
Dear Seed Producer:

	 Test your corn hybrids in the 2017 Virginia Tech Corn Silage Testing Program.  We will test hybrids in the Southwest/Mountain area in Washington County, in the Shenandoah Valley area, in the Southern Piedmont area at Blackstone, and in the Northern Piedmont area at Orange.  You may select any location at a cost of $175 per hybrid per location, or you may select all four locations for a reduced rate of $600 per hybrid.  We plant four replications at each site using a Wintersteiger PlotKing 2600 planter.  We harvest plots and do quality testing in-house using a Foss NIR maching.  We use the Milk2006 system to simplify quality comparisons between corn silage samples.  Complete results from 2016 (and all previous years) may be found on the web at http://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/.)  

	Please return the entry form as soon as possible with a deadline of Friday, February 10.  Note: We’ve had issues recently with VT email being blocked by some organizations.  If you don’t receive an invoice from me (egrucker@vt.edu) in response to your electronic entry, please call me, because I may not have received the entry.  One half pound of seed per entry per location should be sent to me by Friday, March 17.  Failure to meet these deadlines may result in entries being omitted from the tests.  Seed should arrive treated with the same treatments as would be applied for marketing purposes in our region.  Please make sure your entry form has the seed treatment, genetic trait package using numeric indicators found in column 1 of the Handy Bt Trait Table (thanks to Chris DiFonzo, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI and Eileen Cullen, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI), and maturity indicated for each hybrid entered.  Please note on the entry form if an experimental hybrid from 2016 has been assigned a commercial designation for 2017.  This information is necessary when we prepare two and three year averages.  Also, please advise us of any change of address, company name or contact individual.  When using the Handy Bt Trait Table, please make sure it’s the April 2016 edition.

	Send me ½ lb of seed per location.  	Packaging hints (and please pass this information on to whomever is packaging your seed!): send only the amount of seed requested; zip-lock bags are great but don’t use staples; package all locations together (one bag per hybrid); ship to my attention at 1008 Old Mill Rd Blacksburg VA 24061.  Make checks payable to "Virginia Tech Corn Silage Testing," and mail to the address below.  If you have any suggestions for improving the test or questions about the test, please feel free to contact me at (540) 231-4490 or FAX # (540) 231-3075.  I may also be reached via email at egrucker@vt.edu.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Rucker
Coordinator, Grain Crops Variety Testing
Department of Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences
425B Smyth Hall Virginia Tech Mail Code 0403
Blacksburg, VA  24061
telephone (540) 231-4490
fax (540) 231-3075
e-mail egrucker@vt.edu

cc:	H. Behl, P. Blevins, S. Gulick, N. Jones, C. Wilkinson, R. Clark, D. Horn, W. Thomason