Blizzard corn

Blizzard maize stands for a maize hybrid that was approved by the German Federal Plant Variety Office in 1974 and at the same time entered in the German list of varieties for Ciba-Geigy Germany. The plant breeding it was in this hybrid succeeded the heterosis effect as a three-way hybrid of two Hartmais- and a Zahnmais- inbred line to achieve. With a ripening number of 230 (FAO number), this variety belonged to the mid-early ripening group, which reached silage maize maturity even under the difficult climatic conditions in Schleswig-Holstein for a C4 plant . Due to the good stability, resistance to diseases and the high yield security when used both as grain maize in southern Germany and silage maize in northern Germany, it contributed directly to the considerable expansion of maize cultivation especially north of the 50th parallel . The corn cultivation area was expanded by 10 to 20 percent per year from the 1970s and in 1990 reached one million hectares in West Germany.

The seed was in the region Pau generated (France) and was characterized by purity, high germination and driving force of the crucial prerequisite for the successful seed and good germination in cool spring temperatures in northern Europe. Blizzard's market share in Germany was over 30 percent for years, making it the market leader. Due to the further progress in plant breeding and the temporary plant variety protection law in the European Union , blizzard maize has no longer been of any cultivation importance in Europe since the turn of the century.

In autumn 1986 the Polish Bishops' Conference under Cardinal Glemp sent an urgent appeal for help to Polish smallholders to all European producers of agricultural means of production. In the spring of 1987, Ciba-Geigy Basel provided the Polish church leadership with Blizzard seeds for more than 150,000 hectares of maize area free of charge. The church leadership supplied nearly one million needy Polish smallholders inexpensively with this maize seed and used the proceeds for the urgently needed renovation of Polish churches. With the announcement of the delivery at the turn of 1986/87, the heated mood among the rural population, which had arisen from the fact that up to this point only large Polish farms were supplied with valuable hybrid maize seeds, calmed down.

swell

German Bundessortenamt: Descriptive list of varieties of cereals including maize . Hanover 1974.
Witold Trzeciakowski: Informacja Koscielnego Komitetu Rolniczego o dzialnosci w roko 1987 . (Activity report of the Church Agriculture Committee). Warsaw 1987.
Manfred Raupp (ed.): Newer developments in plant protection . Agricultural fair Plovdiv Bulgaria 1986 and 1987. (Bulgarian)
Manfred Raupp (Ed.): Current problemy ochrana rastlin . (Current problems in crop protection). Sympozium Stary Smokovec 1986 and 1990. (Czech)