Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2012 20:53:41 GMT -5
After coons dragging off my best ears, smut infestations, ears breaking under their own weight, and terrible kernel set due to poor tassel - silk synchrony, I have been looking into ways to breed maize to change its architecture and make it more reliable for home production.
Maize having all its seeds borne on a couple ears is my biggest complaint. This year, I had coons drag off the ears of some of my 1 - eared breeds, which means that I lost all of 800 - 1000 seeds as well as any good genes that plant may have had. Some plants also had shanks too thin to support their ears and consquently broke under the weight, terminating the kernels' development weeks before completion.
Furthermore, smut was abundant this year, and quite a few ears were infected. On the infested non-prolific plants, I had to discard the whole ear, which meant another plant's genetics were lost, as well as another 1 / 2 pound of grain. A few plants also nearly fell over because of how unbalanced their ears made the stalks.
These problems all stem from oversized ears, and I would like to change that feature of the crop by breeding for multiple medium-small ears, something like 8 - 10 per 8 foot stalk with 150 or so kernels per ear. Having the grain distributed in multiple places would lessen the chances of losing it all to pests since a critter probably wouldn't try to pick an 8 - eared corn plant clean given how time-consuming and inconvenient it would be versus dragging off one big ear full of food. Having multiple small ears would fix the weak shank problem too, since the ears wouldn't be heavy enough to snap themselves.
Smut problems likely wouldn't be as severe in multi-eared maize either, since, in my experience with smut infestation, only a couple dozen kernels are usually infected, and then typically on one ear. Since a severely infected one has to be discarded regardless of size, it would be much more tolerable to discard one or two ears of many with only 150 - 200 seeds apiece, rather than 700 - 800.
The prolific plant would be much better balanced too, I would imagine.
My other problem with maize is the short window of pollen availabilty for the silks, especially with tillerless cultivars. This summer, we had record breaking heat as well as a bad drought right as the silks emerged. This caused the silks to pop out 10 or even 14 days after pollen shed had stopped, resulting in fully developed, kernelless ears. Only the tillering breeds had pollen available and managed to set a usuable number of seeds. If more tillers were produced, then pollen would be around longer to fertilize any late ears and also compensate for drought-induced tassel & silk disynchrony.
I would like multiple tillers for reasons other than pollen production too, since in poor stands, the remaining plants would tiller heavily, fill the empty space, and produce more grain per plant as compensation, similar to rye. I know that certain maize strains tiller well, but rather than a few here or there, I would like 5 - 6 fully developed ones with function comparable to the main stalk and without some of the growth abnormalities (no ear production, tassel kernels, etc.). That way, if the first stalk were snapped or chewed off (saw a lot of that this year too), the plant would already have several additional shoots to immediately direct its energy into (no 2 week wait for new basal stalks to grow).
Additionally, maize, in my opinion, puts too much of its energy into topgrowth and not enough into primary and bracer root development. That is probably the prime reason that one often has to hill up corn to keep it from lodging (which I personally dislike doing).
So, as a sum I guess, maize has many traits that I quite frankly am not fond of. Probably the best way that I have seen to fix the architectural problems would be to breed maize with teosinte as it would give:
- multiple silking location genes (though excessive ears would have to be selected against in the F2).
- more vigorous primary and brace root development
- abundant production of fully-functional tillers
- a longer pollen-availabilty window
The best candidate I have found is Zea diploperennis, which contributes all of those traits in addition to making extremely heterotic hybrids with maize. I managed to get some daylength-neutral seed from the University of Minnesota, so I'll hopefully be starting the project next year. I had talked about breeding a multiracial maize composite in past posts (I did make a little progress this year), but I think that there is much more that the other teosinte species can give for reliabilty purposes. Afterall, what better way to toughen a cultivated plant than to breed it with a weed? Anybody have any input? (Sorry for the diatribe.)
Maize having all its seeds borne on a couple ears is my biggest complaint. This year, I had coons drag off the ears of some of my 1 - eared breeds, which means that I lost all of 800 - 1000 seeds as well as any good genes that plant may have had. Some plants also had shanks too thin to support their ears and consquently broke under the weight, terminating the kernels' development weeks before completion.
Furthermore, smut was abundant this year, and quite a few ears were infected. On the infested non-prolific plants, I had to discard the whole ear, which meant another plant's genetics were lost, as well as another 1 / 2 pound of grain. A few plants also nearly fell over because of how unbalanced their ears made the stalks.
These problems all stem from oversized ears, and I would like to change that feature of the crop by breeding for multiple medium-small ears, something like 8 - 10 per 8 foot stalk with 150 or so kernels per ear. Having the grain distributed in multiple places would lessen the chances of losing it all to pests since a critter probably wouldn't try to pick an 8 - eared corn plant clean given how time-consuming and inconvenient it would be versus dragging off one big ear full of food. Having multiple small ears would fix the weak shank problem too, since the ears wouldn't be heavy enough to snap themselves.
Smut problems likely wouldn't be as severe in multi-eared maize either, since, in my experience with smut infestation, only a couple dozen kernels are usually infected, and then typically on one ear. Since a severely infected one has to be discarded regardless of size, it would be much more tolerable to discard one or two ears of many with only 150 - 200 seeds apiece, rather than 700 - 800.
The prolific plant would be much better balanced too, I would imagine.
My other problem with maize is the short window of pollen availabilty for the silks, especially with tillerless cultivars. This summer, we had record breaking heat as well as a bad drought right as the silks emerged. This caused the silks to pop out 10 or even 14 days after pollen shed had stopped, resulting in fully developed, kernelless ears. Only the tillering breeds had pollen available and managed to set a usuable number of seeds. If more tillers were produced, then pollen would be around longer to fertilize any late ears and also compensate for drought-induced tassel & silk disynchrony.
I would like multiple tillers for reasons other than pollen production too, since in poor stands, the remaining plants would tiller heavily, fill the empty space, and produce more grain per plant as compensation, similar to rye. I know that certain maize strains tiller well, but rather than a few here or there, I would like 5 - 6 fully developed ones with function comparable to the main stalk and without some of the growth abnormalities (no ear production, tassel kernels, etc.). That way, if the first stalk were snapped or chewed off (saw a lot of that this year too), the plant would already have several additional shoots to immediately direct its energy into (no 2 week wait for new basal stalks to grow).
Additionally, maize, in my opinion, puts too much of its energy into topgrowth and not enough into primary and bracer root development. That is probably the prime reason that one often has to hill up corn to keep it from lodging (which I personally dislike doing).
So, as a sum I guess, maize has many traits that I quite frankly am not fond of. Probably the best way that I have seen to fix the architectural problems would be to breed maize with teosinte as it would give:
- multiple silking location genes (though excessive ears would have to be selected against in the F2).
- more vigorous primary and brace root development
- abundant production of fully-functional tillers
- a longer pollen-availabilty window
The best candidate I have found is Zea diploperennis, which contributes all of those traits in addition to making extremely heterotic hybrids with maize. I managed to get some daylength-neutral seed from the University of Minnesota, so I'll hopefully be starting the project next year. I had talked about breeding a multiracial maize composite in past posts (I did make a little progress this year), but I think that there is much more that the other teosinte species can give for reliabilty purposes. Afterall, what better way to toughen a cultivated plant than to breed it with a weed? Anybody have any input? (Sorry for the diatribe.)