The possessor, generally impoverished, or without facilities for working the land, often furnished the land and seed corn, and the tenant cultivated it, the produce being equally divided between them.
With modern seed corn the varieties to hybridize are carefully selected so that the new variety will exhibit specific traits found in the parent plants.
In the early 1960s, seed corn companies began to use male sterile cytoplasm so that they could eliminate the previous need for hand detassling to save both money and time.