Beck’s Internship

This past summer I was able to take on a corn breeding internship in Marshalltown, IA with Beck’s Hybrids. My major is PGBB and so I wanted experience working with a pollination crew during the summertime. While in Iowa I helped with seed inventory, leading a pollination crew, and running my own intern project. During pollination we cover the silk shoots with bags to protect the silk from stray pollen, and when the time is right, we would pollinate the covered silk with pollen collected in a bag from it’s respective tassel. I taught this procedure to around 25 high school students, leading them throughout July and part of August. The other part of my internship, the intern project, included me taking photos and notes of Beck’s inbred lineup, working with the data to create inbred report sheets for Beck’s employees to use for reference. This overall was an amazing opportunity to see breeding research being done on the corporate side while within a family-oriented business that puts it’s employees needs first. I would definitely recommend this internship to anyone interested.