Any body else breeding corn?

[Alan]

Ok, you guys have all heard about my corn breeding experiments for the most part including Astronomy Domine and it's various selections.

What I'd like to hear about are other corn breeding experiments.

For example Michael, how is your high protein/high oil project doing?

Tom Wagner, I know you once worked with some of the blue corn varieties in a project. Any insight here.

This is basically just a "because I'm curious" about what work is being done breeding corn traditionally post.

[gardenvato]

havent done any myself, but i would like to try crossing a couple of varieties. one is jala maize, from jala, mexico. the ears get to be very long. the other is pigarro maize, from portugal, which grows a very thick ear, to the point that it looks like a pineapple. i would love to cross the two and see what kinds of results there would be, but there are a few problems keeping me from doing it. one is that the seeds are difficult to get ahold of. i was in mexico last month to try to get seeds for jala maize, but we came too early, and none of the fields had dried yet, so we couldnt get any seed for it. as for pigarro, it is grown in portugal, and since i have no solid contacts in portugal or really anywhere in europe, its nearly impossible to get it. the other problem is that jala is a tropical maize variety, and i live in arid in the summer, frozen in the winter, utah. i dont know if our season would be long enough to support jala's growing needs.

here is a picture of jala maize

www.cimmyt.org/english/wps/news/2007/images/aug01.jpg

here is the pigarro

www.itqb.unl.pt/~BCV/carlota_files/espigapigarro1.JPG

[silverseeds]

I bet that jala needs a very long growing season. those are some giant ears!!!! which would shut you down maybe, the aridness I dont think will be as much as a problem as the days to maturity....

[pugs]

Vato,

Those are nice looking ears of corn. We do have people here who live in Europe, so don't be surprised if someone can get the seed for you.

Pugs

[Alan]

Those are both probably daylight sensitive and more tropical leaning varieties.

This experimental cross could be made, but there will be difficulty due to day length requirements.

However, one can use trash bags or a poly hoop covered with shade cloth at opporotune times to meet those requirements.

[grunt]

I wasn't sure where to put this, so move it if not appropriate. This is from the ARS Newsletter

"USDA Scientists, Colleagues Sequence Corn Genome
By Dennis O'Brien
November 19, 2009

WASHINGTON, November 19, 2009—U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their colleagues have completed a four-year effort to sequence the genome of corn, an achievement expected to speed up development of corn varieties that will help feed the world and meet growing demands for using this important grain crop as a biofuel and animal feed. The results represent the largest and most complex plant genome sequenced to date, and are the cover story in the November 20 issue of the journal Science.

"Sequencing the corn genome will help researchers in the United States and around the world develop corn varieties to confront critical global challenges like climate change, hunger, and renewable energy," said Edward B. Knipling, administrator of USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency. "This effort will provide scientists a preliminary blueprint for identifying genetic pathways that will lead to a better understanding of corn and enable scientists to improve corn in a number of ways."

The sequencing will help researchers uncover the relationships between corn genes and traits, develop an overall picture of the plant's genetic makeup, and broaden understanding of how the complex interplay of genetics and environment determines the plant's health and viability. The work also is expected to lead to development of corn varieties with higher yields and better tolerance of droughts, pests and diseases. It also should help scientists produce varieties with fibers, stalks and cellular structures that will make corn a better source of biofuel.

The team, which included Doreen Ware, a computational biologist at the ARS Robert W. Holley Center for Agriculture and Health in Ithaca, N.Y., has released the most comprehensive draft sequence to date, providing the most detailed look thus far at the functional portions of the corn genome. Ware led the computational effort and is a lead author of the report along with Richard Wilson of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., and Patrick S. Schnable of Iowa State University at Ames. Other key participants in the project included the University of Arizona at Tucson and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. USDA's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, along with the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, jointly funded the $29.5 million effort.

Edward Buckler, an ARS geneticist at the Holley Center, and Ware also have used next generation sequencing data to assemble a haplotype genetic map of the corn genome that lays out portions of the genome shared by 27 diverse inbred lines of corn. A haplotype is a combination of alleles—alternative forms of genes—that are located closely together on the same chromosome and tend to be inherited together. The corn lines in the haplotype genetic map were selected specifically because they represent the vast majority of the genetic diversity in corn. By searching through these lines, researchers and breeders can unlock corn's genetic potential and significantly accelerate the breeding of plants to meet the demands of the growing world population and the challenges of global climate change. Buckler's "HapMap," which also is published in Science, shows a 30-fold variation in recombination rates, which are the rates that genetic material from parents mix to show up in the progeny. The map is designed to function like the human genome HapMap, making it easier to link genes and genetic patterns with significant traits, Buckler said. The researchers already are linking the HapMap to the basis of hybrid vigor.

Corn, known among scientists as maize, is one of world's most important crops. Corn was a $47 billion crop in the United States last year. It is the largest production crop worldwide, providing not only food for billions of people and livestock, but also critical feedstock for production of biofuels. Ware said the work should serve as a foundation for understanding and improving on other agricultural crops as well. Plants previously sequenced include rice, sorghum, poplar, grape and Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant widely studied as a model organism. "

Knowing that Buckler's "HapMap," would be of interest to some of you, I found this www.panzea.org/lit/data_sets.html, a collection of data set downloads of Buckler's "HapMap,"which I mostly don't understand, but I believe will have some useful information for those of you that do understand it.

Cheers

[Alan]

Thank you so much Grunt!

BTW, You and grungy will be recieving a package sometime in early December with lots of goodies!

[grunt]

No rush Alan. Winter's gonna be here for a while yet. Forgot to add to my post, if anyone gets hold of Piggaro seeds, I'd be very interested in getting some. I think it would go well in my "Giants Row", which is planted mainly to freak the locals, and make them think about what they could be growing. And because I just plain get a kick out of growing them.

modified to add = Not to mention it would be good genetic material to have in the seed bank.

[MikeM]

Nov 15, 2009 20:44:28 GMT -5 Alan said:

What I'd like to hear about are other corn breeding experiments.

Hey, Alan, I wish I could do some work with corn. Sadly too many of the commercial farmers around me (and I do mean within a kilometre or two) grow GM varieties, which would surely pollute anything I do. As it is I don't even feel that I can participate in the very interesting projects that you and others are driving.

[Alan]

No problem Grunt, I like to get the seeds out middle of winter so you guys can sit, stare, and dream until it gets warm! LOL, that's part of the fun.


Mike, I so wish that were not the case my friend, so many interesting things could be done with corn where you are at my friend, maybe in time we will find way to curtail the infection of our stocks with gmo.

[canadamike]

Alan

5 of my corns, including high protein, were grown by people from ORGANIC MEADOWS, Canada's largest organic dairy coop. I just spoke to the guys, they could not , at the moment of the call, tell me wich one did good and wich did not. I know some of them were a total failure, giving NO crop at all. Being from Grin, you and I have both had the problem of total genetic inbreeding depression, so I will have to change my strategy. Grin were kind enough to accept to give me samples of 500 seeds so I could build up healthy populations, but I was fool enough to plant all the seeds of many of them, being confident they were healthy.

It is a big no no. I will not grow the total amount of seeds of any of the other corns I still have.I'd rather use them in breeding or rebuild them.

Luckily, the high protein corn seeds I provided them with are from the Netherlands genebank, but I talked to them and they are obtained from Grin-USA, so I still have the american seeds with me, in case it did not do well. I am waiting a bit to talk to the grower, it is a very busy time for him, but all that ''survived genetic depression'' has been harvested and is safe.

Ron could not tell me which is which, he did not remember at the time of the call, he , after all, was doing it to help and was unfamiliar with them.

Can't blame the guy. But I feel safe, he is the ''heirloom'' corn guy and fanatic of the coop.

Might I add that the high protein corn is a wonderfully interesting one, either by itself or for corn breeding.

The protein in corn is not as good or complete as soya protein, for an exemple, or even better, camelina, a crop we should explore, being a weed that can be used as a very highly efficient true weed control, being able to grow and take over fields before other weeds in spring, being low growing and extremely rich in very high quality protein laden seeds.

Google camelina, Montana is becoming the camelina center in N.America.

The seeds are scattered on frozen ground in early winter, in Montana they do it with planes...and again, Google it to see how expensive camelina oil and by-products are....it offers the best cost/performance ratio of any crop, nothing that cheap produces sooo much.

In Quebec, the ministry of agriculture is conducing studies, and so far it looks good, of soya fields with interplanted camelina between the rows. It smoother weeds, being itself a very strong weed, and they get a double whammy of protein crops. Camelina is in the mustard family, and almost looks perfectly like mustard.

Meat and dairy cows are fed with it with big success, their hair being lustrous and rich, something any dairy farmer or beef producer sees as a great sign of health.

The Montana experiment, now becoming a very big industry, has been based on the very few accessions in USDA's GRIN.

I have secured the whole 160+ accessions from the Netherlands. Read all the studies, despite the huge actual camelina success in Montana, they all say the potential of this plant has not been reached yet, there is loads of breeding work and improvement to be done...

[canadamike]

MikeM:

You might be out of the loop for dent or flints or popcorns ( hard flints, really)
but you could grow sweet corn 2 feets away from any GM corn field. The gene of sweet corn being recessive, any cross pollination will give you a kernel that will be incredibly different, big, fat, non-shrunken, and very easy to get rid of.

I grow a lot of my sweet corns feets away from GM corn, and I absolutely do not care. This is one area where I can show them them the sacred finger

And there are tribes in South America using sweet corn like a flint one ( sweet is only a slightly modified flint) making flour and grits and all, and although I never tried it, there is litterature trumpeting the goodness of the food.

Works only for sweets though....

Vato: this ear has a certain look, the seeds to, of the pignoletto corn, there are more than one really. Pignoletto means Pine cone. It is still popular in the mountains of Italy, where it is usually grown in higher altitudes. Seeds travel a lot in Europe.

I have lots of samples of fantastic flint corns from Europe. They are not much milk drinkers there, so flour corns are not as popular as in America.

In Europe, I made great contacts with associations and farmers growing exceptional OP corns, mostly in the flint, sometimes in the dent categories. Forget the sweets, they are commercially irrelevant and they eat ours.

And they don't know when to pick it and eat it, for the most, when we would feed them to pigs...but that is another story...

I have samples of corns that produces up to 8 tond per hectare, that is 3.5 tons per acre, in organic agriculture and in VERY POOR SOIL AND ARRID CLIMATES.

You have no idea how Europe is poor in water. The ALPS are an arid environments with rivers that we, north americans, would gladly feature in any good ''just for laughs'' kind of comedy show.

I have seen rivers so dry that they make my pissing dick looks like the source of the Mississipi river...

2.5 tons of corn per acre is the canadian average in a highly chemical fed agriculture.

I live in a place where the soil is so rich they almost double that, nobody in the world produces more milk per cow ( hint: they need to be fed) than we do in my immediate region, but it is particuliar to my region. In organic agriculture, the yields, in bulk weight, are usually smaller, but the protein and other nutition factors, despite less bulk, are usually higher per acre.

These extraordinary corns, able to produce in poor soil ( I have seen and tasted them in my mouth, the ancient way) without much humus, should be made available in small quantities for next year, we will trade, I have to ship them some of my research corns and they will reciprocate.

This Homegrown Goodness people travelling the world in the flesh thing is getting very interesting....

[Blueflint]

Not really a breeding experiment but I am working on a reselection project. A few years ago, I was able to get a sample of a corn collected by John White in the 1980's. I was able to get this before he passed away...www.marilynkinsella.org/Patchwork%20Page/john_white%20tribute.htm This corn is of Overhill Cherokee Origin, a Blue and White Flint. He stated is was "reasonably pure but had picked up some outside traits". This corn does match historical descriptions (except for row number on some ears). I did grow this out in 2007. I kept select ears that were close to the proper type (all plants were proper type). In 2010, I will be planting this again. Some ears I kept will be planted/used as mother plants only and be detasseled (not able to contribute pollen to the gene pool). Other ears will be used as both mother and father plants. The ears from the 2007 growout had kernel row numbers ranging from 8 to 14. Only seed from 8-10 row ears will be planted except for 2 ears with 12 rows (detasseled plants). There are a couple other minor traits I will be weeding out too. I hope to get this cleaned up in 5 generations...let see.

Blueflint

[Alan]

Nov 28, 2009 19:12:02 GMT -5 canadamike said:

MikeM:

You might be out of the loop for dent or flints or popcorns ( hard flints, really)
but you could grow sweet corn 2 feets away from any GM corn field. The gene of sweet corn being recessive, any cross pollination will give you a kernel that will be incredibly different, big, fat, non-shrunken, and very easy to get rid of.

I grow a lot of my sweet corns feets away from GM corn, and I absolutely do not care. This is one area where I can show them them the sacred finger

And there are tribes in South America using sweet corn like a flint one ( sweet is only a slightly modified flint) making flour and grits and all, and although I never tried it, there is litterature trumpeting the goodness of the food.

Works only for sweets though....

Just wanted to point out that the sweet/dent cross with GMO isn't as easy as we might have thought.

Due to transposons, which are basically moving secions of DNA, selection only for non dent kernals in a sweet corn patch will not allow as to allieviate ourselves of the GMO monster.

Another interesting thing I've been researching is the domestication of sweet corn itself. It appears that sweet is not just a mutation of the flint gene, but in fact, and I've seen this is many selections I have collected and which are floating around in the Astronomy Domine mix and through a lot of the Native American sweet corns that indeed sweet corn has been developed at least five different times and indeed that particular gene can be turned on in all categories of corn.

I can't think of the name of it off of the top of my head, but for example, Native Seeds SEARCH last year carried one that clearly was a mutation of a flower corn, I've also seen dent mutations, and of course the waxy mutation, and most obviously the flint ones which we so closely associate with the golden bantam type seed structure, and allthough it is a different gene all together, the supersweets are nothing more than a further mutation of the flint corn gene.

Hope that didn't come off too confusing.


Keep me up to date on the high protein corn project Michael, I would like to get a sample of it for breeding purposes in the new dent cross I"m working with between Reids yellow, bloody butcher, and Boone County White which I am producing as an exclusive feed for my poultry.

[spud]

I grew hopi blue dent corn this year for my chickens and it did better than I expected. It didn't lodge and the ears hung down nicely to dry. It didn't seem to fussy about fertiziler needs and produced two nice ears per stalk. Don't know about the protein percentage but it is supposed to have 20% more than other varieties whatever that means.

I might do some breeding but it's an every other year thing for me d/t farms across the street.

I saved some seed, from multiple different ears, is that enough or will I have to introduce another variety in future to keep it producing well?