August 11, 2009

Scientists from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have developed a massive genetic resource for geneticists and breeders to unlock the basis of corn diversity.

The scientists found that the most natural genetic variation in corn is the product of numerous genes working together, each with a small effect that could be manipulated by breeders.

These findings may help determine the role of genes in agronomic traits, and change the way breeders improve crops using high-efficiency molecular technologies.

The scientists developed and assessed more than one million corn plans. Corn is one of the world's most important food crops, and it is genetically 15 times more diverse than the human genome. Therefore it is important for scientists to learn about key gene variants in the corn genome and the role these variants play in various traits.

Hybrid vigour is responsible for the highly productive corn hybrids grown across the US. The researchers found that hybrid vigour results in part because hybrids bring together optimal gene combinations that are unlikely to occur in current breeding schemes. Novel breeding schemes designed to exploit this new knowledge of gene combinations will accelerate plant breeding worldwide.