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 10, 2014
Dear Seed Producer:

	 Test your corn hybrids in the 2014 Virginia Tech Corn Silage Testing Program.  We will test hybrids in the Southwest/Mountain area, in the Shenandoah Valley area, in the Southern Piedmont area at Blackstone, and in the Northern Piedmont area.  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 will plant four replications at each site using a Wintersteiger PlotKing 2600 planter.  We will harvest plots and do quality testing in-house.  We plan to use the Milk2006 system (as we did in 2013) to simplify quality comparisons between corn silage samples.  Complete results from 2013 have been posted to the VCE public website. The web address is http://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/CSES/CSES-71/CSES-71.html

	Please return the entry form as soon as possible with a deadline of Friday, February 14.  One half pound of seed per entry per location should be sent to me by Friday, March 21.  Failure to meet these deadlines may result in entries being omitted from the tests.  We will accept seed treated with insecticide, but no additional fungicides may be used.  Please make sure your entry form has seed treatments, genetic trait package using numeric indicators found in column 1 of the Handy Bt Trait Table (Chris DiFonzo, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI and Eileen Cullen, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI), and maturities indicated.  Please advise us of any changes of address, company names or contact people.  Also, please note on the entry form if an experimental hybrid from 2013 has been assigned a commercial designation for 2014.  This information is necessary when we prepare two and three year averages. 

	Packaging hints (and please pass this information on to whomever is packaging your seed!): send only the amount of seed requested; ziplocs 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 concerning 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 Hokanson
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

Enc.
cc:	H. Behl
	P. Blevins
	S. Gulick
	M. Yancey
	C. Teutsch
	W. Thomason