Continuous corn response to residue removal, tillage, and nitrogen

There has been a great deal of recent interest in “bioenergy” crops that could be burned to generate electricity or heat or used as a feedstock in the manufacture of liquid fuels. Cornstalks represent one of the major “biomass” sources that currently exist. Because today’s healthy, high-yielding hybrids leave behind stalks that present a management challenge, some people are wondering why we don’t help solve both problems—the need for biomass and the difficulty of managing residue—by harvesting cornstalks to use as fuel