On July 10, the annual Sweetcorn Festival was held in the lobby and courtyard of the CBNU College of Agriculture, Life & Environment Sciences. The Sweetcorn Festival is an extension of sweetcorn’s new product exhibition that was held on July 7 in 2023. The Sweetcorn Festival was held with the aim of informing the public that sweetcorn can be used as an ingredient for various foods. Professor So Yoon-sup, from the Dept. of Crop Science, showed various foods using new product sweetcorn that he developed and grew with students. He revealed sweetcorn ice cream, baked sweetcorn and other sweetcorn snacks. Thanks to those various foods, the Sweetcorn Festival gained great popularity.

  Hwang You-sol (Dept. of Crop Science, 21) who made sweetcorn ice cream at the Sweetcorn Festival commented “It is my second time participating in this event. Even though we had to hold the event in the lobby and courtyard because of the rainy season, many local residents and students participated and ate the sweetcorn that we harvested. I was proud of it.”

  Prof. So explained that he did not have enough time to promote the event, because harvest season began earlier than expected this year. Moreover, the sweetcorn harvest season overlapped with the rainy season. He planned to give participants a chance to  harvest sweetcorn personally, but eventually it was cancelled due to rain. Nevertheless, the event successfully concluded, with more than 450 people attending the Sweetcorn Festival.

  A new product named Supreme White and Supreme Duo were used at the event. Prof. So explained that, “Supreme White has a great texture, even though it is harvested beyond its optimal harvesting stage. Supreme Duo has a high sugar content, and constantly maintains the high content on a national scale. There is no regional gap.” “While yellow sweetcorn is mainly driving the market in Korea, Supreme White and Supreme Duo, which are bi-color, were not exactly known at all, so we want to show them intensively at the event,” he said.

  In closing, Prof. So said “I want to develop the Sweetcorn Festival to grow sweetcorn into regional specialty crops. Even though the Sweetcorn Festival was a local event, I hope to expand it to a regional Sweetcorn Festival with Chungcheongbuk-do and Agricultural Research Service, in the future. Furthermore, I will make an effort to promote CBNU through this new product development and breeding research. I will also try to ensure that the technology of CBNU contributes to the community.”