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COMPOSITION OF CORN IN THE UNITED STATES change materially the composition of the nor- mal plant. Relatively small nation-wide sur- veys, such as those reported here, appear to be adequate for such periodic checks. It was hoped that the correlation study would show sufficiently significant relation- ships between the contents of various nutrients to be of practical use. A possible use envisaged was the estimation of the content of difficult- to-determine nutrients from the content of easily determined nutrients for samples on which complete analysis is not feasible. It ap- pears, however, that the correlations are in general too low to be of value for this purpose. SUMMARY In 1946, 169 samples, and in 1947, 197 sam- ples of corn were collected at harvest time from 30 states in 10 climatic regions in the United States. Chemical determinations were made of proximate nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. These data were used to calculate means, coefficients of variation, and other sta- tistical information. The variation between regions was signifi- cant (19 to 1) for fat in both years, and for a number of nutrients in one year but not the other. The large within-state variation for most nutrients casts doubt on the practical impor- tance of regional differences. Regional varia- tions in fat are possibly confounded with varietal and color differences. Color of the corn could not be significantly related to any constituent except carotene and fat. Between varieties of yellow corn no sig- nificant differences were found except for fat. No sufficiently high correlation was found between any nutrients to indicate a possible relationship useful in estimating the amounts of nutrients that are difficult to determine. The mean protein content of No. 2 corn as found in this study is lower than that reported by Morrison in 1936. No direct explanation for these lower values was found as a result of this study. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Committee is indebted to Miss Hazel Orcutt, who kept records and compiled the data, and to Mr. M. L. Richards, who was re- sponsible for the statistical analyses. Great credit is due to the extension and research personnel of the colleges of agriculture, to the state feed control laboratories, and to the lab- oratories of the feed and associated industries whose help in collecting and analyzing samples made this survey possible. REFERENCES 1. Committee on Feed Composition, National Re- search Council. 1947. Composition of Feeds. Report No. I. 2. Committee on Feed Composition, National Re- search Council. 1947. Composition of Feeds. Supplement to Report No. 1. 3. Barley, E. B., and E. E. De Turk. 1948. Corn Pro- tein and Soil Fertility. What's New in the Pro- duction, Storage, and Utilization of Hybrid Seed Corn. American Seed Trade Assoc., Hybrid Corn Division, Annual Report 3: 84-95. 4. Morrison, F. B. 1936. Feeds and Feeding. 20th Ed., Morrison Publishing Co., Ithaca, New York. 1050 pp. Illus. 5. Schneider, B. II., H. L. Lucas and K. C. Beeson. 1953. The Nutrient Composition of Corn in the United States. Agricultural and Food Chemistry 1: 172-177,1953.
