Pioneer New Holland

This summer my internship is taking place at DuPont Pioneer’s corn research station in New Holland, Pennsylvania.  This is one of Pioneer’s only corn research stations on the East Coast.  They have about 50 acres of field corn test plots on site.  Many other plots are located nearby in surrounding counties in southeastern Pa.  Some plots are located in Maryland and Delaware as well.  At this station the researchers and their assistants run experiments to test and improve Pioneer field corn varieties for both grain and silage.  Four interns are hired in the summer to help maintain the corn plots, collect data, and help facilitate the pollination season.

I started work and we were put on a “fast-track” to learn  all there was to know about a corn research station.  We started at a busy time as corn planting season was in full swing.  In a normal year, by the time we would have started helping Pioneer, much of the planting would have already been done.  Since it was a wet and cool spring, there was still much to plant when we arrived.  In our first few weeks we helped sort seed in preparation for planting, hand-planted individual plots of corn, and rode on the corn planter to plant the big field trials. They plant the corn using a Kinze 8-row corn planter with 8 riders.  Everybody had a headset on so we could communicate with each other over the noise of the tractor and vacuum system on the planter.  Each person was responsible for dumping different seed packets in one row.  Some of the plots they plant are only several feet in length and are either two or four rows wide.  Therefore, we traveled at about 1 or 2 mph across the field and dumped a packet of seeds in every 6 seconds to the sound of a timed and automated buzzer.

Planting corn trials

After all of the corn was planted we helped clean up and organize the seed storage and inventory room inside the main building.  We spent several rainy days re-organizing seed packets and making an inventory of what they had and what they wanted to keep for next season.  Some of what we inventoried would eventually be sent to other research stations.  When it is winter in Pennsylvania, seed from Pioneer’s experiments are sent from the New Holland station to other research stations in Mexico and Hawaii, where corn can be grown during those times.  This way the experiments and studies continue throughout the calendar year.  Also, some of the seed the researchers did not want to keep was discarded in bulk seed bins to later be incinerated or by some means destroyed.  These are a few of the things the other interns and I have done and a few of the aspects of the seed research business that we have learned about.  It is bound to be an interesting experience as I continue to work for Pioneer.