Dean Wesley, left, and Ed Breece stand on the Harry Mussatto Golf Course that was once crop research plots. (Photo courtesy of WIU)

Dean Wesley, left, and Ed Breece stand on the Harry Mussatto Golf Course that was once crop research plots. (Photo courtesy of WIU)

Forget computer models, early research into crop hail damage was done the old-fashioned way — by hand.

Two Western Illinois University (WIU) School of Agriculture professors, Ed Breece and Dean Wesley, and their students played key roles. Breece and Wesley, now both emeritus agriculture professors, were part of a research project funded by the Hail Insurance Adjusters Research Association. The goal was to develop a more precise way to determine yield losses from hailstorms.

“They were looking for better data for the adjusters, such as what to look for in the field 10 to 14 days after a storm,” said Wesley. “There are different types of injury to the plants at different stages of growth: stand reduction and defoliation to the plants.”

During the research in the late 1960s and early 1970s, nine acres of WIU University Farm ground and 900 study plots were dedicated to research on corn plants at various stages of growth.

“We damaged special plots with ice, which were set up to simulate hail damage on the corn crop,” Breece said. “We created the hail damage by hauling 400-pound blocks of ice to WIU and having student workers break them into basketball-size pieces. They were then put into a forage harvester to chop them into hail-size pieces to launch the pieces of ice at the corn plants. We also had to orient them (insurance adjusters) about agricultural practices so they could communicate better with the farmers.”

The professors and their student workers used scissors to defoliate the plants and a hoe to reduce the stand to simulate hail damage. The research gathered from the various ways of simulating hail damage took into consideration a variety of factors, including the population of plants per acre and how a (sunlight) loss of leaf area impacted the ability of hail-damaged plants to recover from the loss, Wesley explained.

“We would harvest each plot and determine the yield related mathematically to modify the charts given to adjusters,” Wesley said. “The data we collected was made into charts used by adjusters to determine yield loss.”

They also harvested strange looks when the non-initiated learned about their storm-simulation research.

“One of our students told his dad we were cutting the leaves off the corn plant, and he just about didn’t let his son come back to campus,” Breece said.

In addition to replicating crop damage and educating students, the professors also shared knowledge with insurance professionals. “We participated in the training of insurance adjusters, most who worked during the summer as per-diem adjusters and were teachers the rest of the year,” Breece added.

During part of the research project, Breece paused working at WIU and spent two years pursuing a doctoral degree from Iowa State University. While studying in Ames, Iowa, Breece worked with a professor who had constructed an ice machine to simulate hail damage to soybeans as part of the same research project.

“The machine had a blower on it, and a 4-inch tube, so it was a lot more sophisticated than what we had been doing,” he said.

The WIU research on hail damage on non-irrigated corn helped create more accurate hail damage tables for the crop insurance industry — tables that are still used today. While the emeritus professors’ crop damage work still stands, their former research fields today support work of a different sort. That land now comprises the front nine holes of WIU’s Harry Mussatto Golf Course.

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