The market for sweet corn - which stands at $807m per year in the US alone - is driven by the diversity of the crop, which is popular in fresh, canned and frozen forms.
However, fresh sweet corn is extremely perishable as a result of the rapid decrease in sugar content, discoloration and risk of pathogen infection.
In addition, it remains a largely seasonal crop, with production peaking in July and only around ten percent of the annual volume marketed during the winter months.
According to researchers from the Universities of Florida and Georgia, these seasonal production limitations as well as the perishable nature of the vegetable spurred interest in developing reliable methods for predicting characteristics of the crop.
The new 'simulation model' has the capacity to predict the quality and yield of sweet corn crops.
Simulation models are widely accepted tools used in the agricultural industry, and although such tools have been available for field corn for over 20 years, no such model existed for sweet corn until this year.
The new tool, which was developed over a five year period, is based on a field corn model, which was modified to improve the simulation of ear growth, to predict ear fresh market yield, and to predict fresh market ear quality according to US standards.
"The sweet corn market is based on the quality of fresh market whole ears, which is different from the dry grain measure used in the field corn market.
We found that modifying a well known field corn simulation model was enough to correctly simulate the growth and production of fresh market sweet corn," said researcher Jon Lizaso "Existing maize simulation models had limited potential to assist sweet corn production as a result of the distinctive nature of the marketed end product.
The new simulation model can improve the quality of sweet corn ear growth as well as predicting fresh market yield and fresh market ear quality," he said.
Source: Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 132: 238-436 (2007) "Developing a Sweet Corn Simulation Model to Predict Fresh Market Yield and Quality of Ears" Authors: J.I. Lizaso, K.J. Boote, C.M. Cherr and J.M.S. Scholberg