During this growing season, western Corn Belt farmers sweltered through a dusty drought. Some central Iowa farmers chewed their fingernails, hoping their early-planted corn would uniformly emerge in suddenly cold soils. And some eastern Corn Belt farmers worried early-season rains would wash away plant-pulsing nitrogen.

Does just thinking about such scenarios make your palms sweat? Well, get this. By this time next decade, these worries may cease thanks to some groundbreaking technology now in the works.

• Worried about drought? Chill. You'll have hybrids and varieties to soothe this scourge that's as old as time.

• You'll never be able to plant corn in snowbanks. However, cold-tolerant corn will enable you to maximize yield potential by enabling you to move up planting dates.

• Concerned about nitrogen washing away? Although you can't control the weather, you'll be able to control the way your corn uses this elusive element. Scientists are developing hybrids that increase nitrogen use efficiency by 30%.

It almost sounds like an agricultural version of the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, where ghost baseball players come out of the cornfield to fulfill the dream of the fictional Iowa farmer, Ray Kinsella. Instead, though, scientists worldwide are working on these projects to fulfill these agronomic dreams.

Then there's the final question:

How much will this stuff yield? Well, corn has a genetic potential yield of 800 to 900 bushels per acre, while soybeans can yield up to 100 bushels per acre. That's before all the alligators in the field start snapping at them -- stressors like drought, disease, and insects.

Traits like drought resistance, cold tolerance, and nitrogen-use efficiency won't recover all yield potential. However, they aim at environmental stressors that have historically limited yields. They build upon the first wave of traits that first surfaced in the 1990s and this decade, such as glyphosate-tolerant varieties and hybrids, and corn hybrid resistance to European corn borer and corn rootworm. Aiming at environmental stressors is particularly important, given that global warming is now reality.

"The weather is getting more volatile, as we're seeing more wildfires in the West and hurricanes along the coasts," says Patrick Schnable, associate director of the Iowa State University Plant Sciences Institute. "We have to make plants adapt to wider swings in the weather."