Henry Agard Wallace didn't invent hybrid corn. He wasn't the first to investigate inbred or crossbred lines. The Iowa native can't even take credit for selling the first commercial hybrid seed.

Yet, Wallace is often remembered first among the pantheon of hybrid corn trailblazers for one simple reason: He and his Hi-Bred Corn Co. brought this innovation to the farmgate.

Today, the company Wallace founded is known as Pioneer Hi-Bred International, the flagship seed brand of Corteva. On April 20, 2026, it celebrates its 100th anniversary as the first company dedicated to the development, production and marketing of hybrid corn.

"Even now, a century later, crop innovation that increases productivity for farmers is the guiding force at Pioneer," said Dean Podlich, the company's digital seed lead and de facto brand historian. "What an incredible journey of progress it has been."

HYBRID HOPES

In the early 20th century, corn farming in the United States wasn't much different than after the Civil War. USDA records from the mid-1860s to the 1930s estimated national average corn yields between 25 to 30 bushels per acre (bpa).

"Farmers were growing a lot of different open-pollinated varieties of corn, and production was very primitive," Podlich explained. "At season's end, farmers would look for the best ears and keep that as seed. Yield had basically stagnated."

Scientists searched for ways to break through this yield ceiling. In his book, "The Hybrid Corn Makers," A. Richard Crabb described early efforts by Edward Murray East in Connecticut and George Shull in New York, both of whom experimented with inbred corn lines and attempted to harness "the power of hybridization."

"The two men differed over the best means of using this power," Crabb wrote, "but the two great scientists stood shoulder to shoulder on the great underlying concept that hybridization properly applied could give us corn and other plant and animal servants vastly superior to any that had ever existed before."

Around the same time in Iowa, Wallace was exploring his interest in corn. In May 1904, he conducted his first experiment, measuring yield performance between winners and losers from a corn competition that judged on aesthetics and uniformity. The prize-winning ears failed to outyield the lowest-ranking ones, a result that would shape his thinking.

Wallace graduated from Iowa State College in 1910 and was conducting corn research by 1913. When news of a double-cross hybrid reached Wallace in 1919, he began to look upon corn breeding in a different light.

"One of the limitations with single-cross hybrids was adequate seed production," Podlich said. "This concept of a double-cross provided more reliable seed production, enabling hybrids to be scaled across a greater number of corn acres."

In 1920, Wallace helped to establish the Iowa Corn Yield Test. This competition, Crabb explained, identified outstanding open-pollinated varieties from which superior inbred lines could be developed while also providing comparison against hybrids. Top-yielding entries received the Banner Trophy.

Wallace entered hybrids in the test, notably winning with a single-cross hybrid known as Copper Cross. In 1924, the hybrid was sold to farmers, making it Wallace's first commercial seed venture and placing him at the doorstep of seed innovation.

SEED COMPANY SPROUTS

Initially, hybrid developers envisioned farmers producing their own seed. Wallace concluded the only way to provide high-quality hybrid seed in sufficient volume was to produce it for them. The Hi-Bred Corn Co. was thus born in 1926.

"It was a struggle at first," Podlich said. "There were skeptics. Hybrid seed was expensive, and the Great Depression had begun. The first products sold for $10 or $12 per bushel compared to open-pollinated seed that cost 50 cents or was free. But, then the droughts of 1934 and 1936 really allowed hybrids to shine, and adoption took off."

In Iowa in 1932, hybrids accounted for less than 1% of all corn acres. In 1935, the same year the company name changed to Pioneer Hi-Bred Corn Co., hybrids were found on 6% of acres; by 1942, about 99% of Iowa corn acres were planted to hybrids.

Pioneer employed a "farmer-salesman" approach, identifying reputable farmers who could explain the benefits to friends and neighbors. They distributed free 8-pound bags of seed to let farmers experience hybrid corn.

"They also had what they referred to as 'half and half,' where half a field was planted with a hybrid and the other half planted with an open-pollinated variety," Podlich said. "The farmer would only have to pay if the hybrid performed better."

In 1933, Wallace left the seed company he helped found to become U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Franklin Roosevelt; he later served as his vice president.

Pioneer continued to grow, establishing independent hybrid corn seed businesses in other U.S. states and Canada, along with ventures into both chickens and cattle.

"After World War II, the improvements in genetics -- combined with increased mechanization and the advent of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer -- really helped to drive productivity," Podlich said. "In the late 1950s, Pioneer began branching into sorghum and alfalfa."

In 1970, Pioneer's separate entities combined as Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc., which continued to grow, expanding into wheat, soybeans, canola and sunflowers. In 1973, the company went public. By 1999, Pioneer was wholly owned by DuPont, and after merging with Dow Agrosciences in 2017, the agriculture division was spun off as Corteva, where the Pioneer brand resides today.

In 1926, when the Hi-Bred Corn Co. began, the average corn yield was 25.7 bpa. In 2025, U.S. corn production reached a record average yield of 186.5 bpa -- more than a sevenfold increase in 100 years. While farm management and new technologies have been instrumental, there's no doubt that hybridization of corn was paramount to this increase.

Even today, the legacy of those early hybrids still lives on in Pioneer's product offerings. For example, in 2023, Virgina farmer David Hula set the current world record corn yield of 623.8439 bpa with Pioneer P14830VYHR.

"We can trace that product's pedigree all the way back to an experimental hybrid that won the Banner Trophy in the Iowa Corn Yield Test in the 1920s," Podlich said. "It's fascinating to see the evolution of the germplasm and the continual power of selection."

Jason Jenkins can be reached at jason.jenkins@dtn.com

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